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5 Beatle-Juices editorial Andrew Porter 

THE ELLISH 

9 Introduction......................Andrew Porter 

11 "how Harlan Ellison Came To Be So Honored,.." 


16 Harlan Ellison............. .Lee Hoffman 

17 Harlan Ellison--......................Ted White 

21 The Jet-Propelled Birdbath,...Robert Silverberg 

24 Books And words..................Harlan Ellison 

25 A Time For Daring................ Harlan Ellison 


35 En Garde!? column Ted White 

38 Heply To Ted White Stephen Pickering 

43 Lupoff-s Book ' eeks ocok3 Dick Lupoff 

51 Fatroans A Narrative Of The Underground 

John Hoardman 

59 Neither Rain Nor Snow Andrew Porter 

63 Random Factors? lettercol The Readers 

72 The Penultimate Truth Contributors Page 

COVER ARTWORK 

Front Cover by Jack Gaughan 
Back Cover by Gray Korrow 

INTERIOR ARTWORK 


65 , 67.............................. Colin Cameron 

51, 54, 55, 56..................Rosa Chamberlain 

14> 48.................. ..........Jack Harness 

3$.... ,Lee Hoffman 


4, 47s, 62., 69. 72..................Andrew Porter 

11, 12, 13, 14, 15..............William Rotsler 

5, 10, 42 , 57*......................Steve Stiles 

Algol is published occasionally by Andrew Por¬ 
ter, 24 East 82nd Street, New York NY, 10028, 
It is available for contributions of articles 
(see editorial), artwork, fiction, or letters 
of comment Algol can also be obtained for 50£ 
or in trade with other fanzines. Covers offset 
by A1 Schuster of Aton Offset . Entire contents 
copyright (7T) 1967 by Andrew Porter? all rights 
reserved . This is Doompublicafcion #250, dated 
Larch 18th, 1967 . Steve Stiles for TAFF!!! 



























































B&RTLG - 

juices 


EDITORIAL 



spc.oaf Is.'ue of Algol„ To a large 
cvhcnt, ib la concerned vrlth Harlan Ellison,, In- 
•. t» . =■ g j . os you will find cartoons by Bill 

ell l " out what .Harlan Ellison was doing at 
; \ : iercon :.n San Diego, and what he ig 
"An* in this issue,, You'll also discover what Lee 
: •' v'c.l White and Bob Silverberg think of when 
they think the name "Harlan Ellison," And you will 
V. e speech that Harlan gave at the WesterCon, 
•*:} C’och that I'm sure will be used for years to 
'•a-:;; as an example of tl.e type of dynamic thinking 
l r] : ; ?.lison has urged on the science fic¬ 
tion field, 


u g that is act what makes this a special iss¬ 
ue. \-\i\~. riches this issue different is that it has 
been edited by a fan 'who has a different outlook 
Hf? . V-ifeh each issue of Algol, I've been trying 
to c. ji la fanzine that is twice as good as each 
ovicuo iosue. I’ve been trying to create a fanzine 
t la one way will become a forum for fandom, a 
: i .f ion of faanish and sorcon voice that people 

>,5.13. i : .uten to whether they bs an Ed Wood or an 
/raie : in attitude. And I think to sane extent 
! ve cvreceded; I've created a fanzine that people 
jig ten to, a fanzine that draws responses from all 
•Hies -ud all levels of fandom, 

?t I’ve been publishing this fanzine now for 
over ... y.xrs, and ray famish ideals have changed, 

'. . • •: ;i c recognition by fandom. I've 

. ’ T'cc.:Ti’t^on is no longer enough. 

* • ' • -r* teacher, occas- 

, , c . . i. to the courses I taught, 

..., ... Li.;.-. dream is no longer enough. Just 

before I published the 9th issue, I dropped out of 
college because I saw that wasn’t what I really 
wanted, either. 

Recognition by fandom is no longer enough, I 
discovered, shortly after the-last ispue of this 
fanzine. Not recognition as a leading fan and fan¬ 
zine publisher mind you; I've not yet received that 
honor and I fell that I've still got a way to go 
before I could accept such recognition with anything 
but guilt because I was "putting something over" 
on fandom. 



5 






The cryptic remark "See Page 6" win be explained here. This page is being 
written some 6 months arter the previous page. . is now late November, and the 
meaning I 'had sought to express in the words o n the previous page has shifted and 
lost the emphasis I was searching for. Or., in words of late November 1966, it no 
longer applies to Andrew Forter at this time and place. Therefore I am not going 
to continue that editorial strain. 


++++++++ 


, I am sending back money to people who send it to me for subscriptions, as 
I’ve decided not to accept them any more. Algol cones out, to infrequently for me 
to burden myself with the necessity of keeping trap of a multitude (trap? trap? 
did I say trap? Freudian Slip — please excuse Hrack of a multitude of subscrip¬ 
tions. The draft is looming large in my legend, if I may paraphrase the Beatles- 
and this fanzine may very well cease publication for e period of 2 or more years, 
or else it may become a Canadian Humour-zine, although the humor of the situation 
will be lost on a large number of government officials. 

This issue seas the price go to 50$. If you don’t want to pay the price, I 
would sugjest you write something for a future issue. If you are a poor starving 
college student like Joe Staton, a few illustrations of nekid girruls will get 
you the next issue, posthaste. 

Arnold Katz, editor/publisher of half of Quip, which is a college humor mag¬ 
azine, has suggested that I write out my editorials before I type them onto the 
masters, father than take the advice of one who is, admittedly, vulgar and osten- 
tacious (guilt through association, y'know), I type these immoral words directly 
onto master. Let the typoes fall where they may. 


+ + H- + + + + + + + + 


There are several things that have been squeezed out of this issue (he said 
as he squeezed still more out): they include an article on "The Cattle ’Jars," which 
hasn’t been written yet, by Pat Lupoff, plus an article, "Are Femmefan8 People?" 
by Robin White, who is most admirable in her own right, both as a person and an 
object... Ah, yes. And a poem by Jerry Knight, who thought it would be published 
when he gave it to Bob Lichtman six or so years ago. And lots of other things, in¬ 
cluding an article by Samuel R. Delany. And lots more things that I don’t have yet., 


+ + + + + + + + -r + + 


Another interesting thing that has made this page rather out of date i 3 that 
New York has won the bid for the 1967 25th World SF Convention. I’m Secretary, and 
thus don't expect to see much of a great rebirth as far as my general fanac or the 
schedule of Algol goes. We are aiming to put on a good, original worldcon, and I 
pity the convention that will follow ours, for they’ll have a long way to go to 
top us. Between September 1st 1965 and September 1st 1966 I personally traveled 
nearly 10,000 miles attending conventions. I met a lot of people, and I made a 
lot of ititi friends. New York won the convention against strong opposition, and 
if you want to join, send your C3 to WYCon III, P.0. Box 367, NY, NY, 10028. This 
issue has been a long time in coming out. I hope to have another issue by the time 
of the NYCon. It's rather odd; I was just thinking. New York in ’6?, L.A, in '68, . 
St. Louis in *69, Baltimore in «70, Seattle in *71, Birmingham, U.K. in ’72, Chi-' 
con IV in *73, and...New York once more in ’74??!!?!? The mind boggles. -p 






MORE R.I E 


Since I first began to type the masters and stencils for this issue, some nine 
months have passed. There are a few details which must now be corrected, in order 
to assure the proper flow as the reader reads this issue„ 

Last summer Stephen Pickering was at the height of his career. He was known 
throughout fandom s and provided a most satisfactory target for such as Ted White, 

Ben Solon, Bob Coulson, and others who found his ungramatical, unorganized, and 
blatantly anti-fandom articles ample planks on which to sharpen their claws. 

Thus, Ted White 4 s column in this issue deals with Stephen Pickering in a manner 
designed to uteely reduce Pickering to the state of a blithering idiot. This has 
since proved unneccesary. 

In December 6f 1966, Stephen Pickering was a house guest of Forry Ackerman, one 
of the finest and most respected men in fandom. 

After Pickering had left his house, Ackerman noted several items of his vast 
collection missing, and, together with Walt Daugherty, drove to Pickerings* house 
where he found several thousand dollars worth of his collection, which Pickering 
had stolen. 

Faced with these facts, Pickering, in the pages of Degler! (a newszine which I 
publish) countered with the argument that he had %iade a mistake^, and also that 
these acts of thievery should not be judged without learning about Pickering*s polit¬ 
ical activities beforehand. 

These arguments, as in most of Pickering*s articles, were completely ridiculous, 
full of falacy, and generally laughable. 

Within the space of a month Pickering has been ostracized from fandom; no more 
of his articles have been printed, ncre has he submitted more of his writings to 
the fan press, 

Forry Ackerman has not pressed charges. Forry Ackerman, who has helped and given 
precious amounts of his time and energy to helping countiess fans, has refused to 
press charges.. The amount of items stolen (pressbooks, original Bradbury mss,. count¬ 
less stills from motion pictures, rare sf books, etc.) qualifies Pickering for the 
charge of Grand Larceny. His actions alone .show that Pickering is badly in need of 
psychiatric help; yet Forry has refused to press charges. 

Thus it is that Ted’s attack on Pickering is badly dated. Yet it is still fascin¬ 
ating, and I’m sure that the readers will be interested in it. In the light of snbse- 
qent events, in fact, it’s fascinating. 

The slant of Algol will be changing agin, I‘m afraid, I’m seeking articles on 
the present state of science fiction, as well as indicative trends on where it is 

7 








going, and why, I think fandom is vitally concerned with this stuff called science 
fiction. Judgin' from the response the speeches and panels have had at the various 
conferences and conventions in the past year. 


and there is, of course, the excellent example of Chapter 2, Verse 2 of Bill 
fonaho’s zine, li abakkuk . liabakkuk did two excellent articles dealing with science 
fiction, and :ot a hell of a response. Overwhelming, in fact, if I'm any Judge of 
response to fanzines,, Greg benford and George Locke certainly did push a few but¬ 
tons! 

+ + + 4 + + 

The last issue of this monstrosity came out nearly a year ago. Since that 
time, the apa has suffered a distinct setback. Lany of the small, newly established 
ones are gone.. Of-1 A, an older apa is gone also, but seems to have been replaced by 
Publishing And Distributing Service, or PADS. The age of the Ape., or the era of 
start-it-yourself, is distinctly over. 


Within the past few months such worthy fanzines as Nyarlahothe o from Ben Solon, 
Nlekas from Ed I'eskys & Felice rtolfe, liabakkuk from Bill Donaho, Lighthouse from 
Terry Carr, and Hippocampelephantocainelos from Fred Hollander have done much to 
dispell the thought that nobody is publishing a large fanzine anymore. 


On the British scene the facts ar a bit more discouraging. Britain, formerly 
iueen of the seas and standard of a vast empire, is sinking deeper and deeper into 
military and economic decay., The rise in postal rates in that country is doing 
much to discourage large, hefty fanzines. We should all thank Ghod (and the USPOD) 
that 3rd class and Book date still exist in the United States, Arnie Katz, publisher 
with Lon Atkina of ouip should feel especially thankful. The 5th issus of that fan-* 
zine is 102 pages, and would cost a few cents sent first class. 

i 

That large fanzines are once again being published is a good sign. It shows that 
fandom is once a ;ain curious enough about the world around it to support a large fan¬ 
zine together with all the tojics and thousands of words of discussion that it takes 
to fill a fanzine of more than 40 pages. 

+++++++++++ 

Steve Stiles Dept, ; The TArF race this year will set an American fan down on 
British soil to attend the British national Convention in 19o8» Steve Stiles, well 
known fan-about-town is running A I think it is the duty of every thinking fan to 
vote for Steve Stiles, because I think that he's the best candidate for TAFF„ Dow, 
I've been thinking about this rationally, and what I've been t inking is pretty 
much summed up in the previous sentence. Steve has been nominated by Walt Willis and 
Arthur Thomson in England (or the UKj pardon me, .‘alt!), and by a whole bunch of 
worthies here in the US. I really don't know who all these worthies are because 
Terry Carr isn't home for me to call and ask him, but I'n pretty sure that they're 
all fine and upstanding worthy-type pillars of ftH their respective communities, 
and everyone who reads this should go out and vote for Steve for Taff, else 7"11 
hit you all with a pillar myself. Thank you. 

+ + + + + + + + + + 1- 


I publish a newszine entitled Degler! I think it would be a wonderful thing if 
everyone who reads this sends me a dollar for a 15 issue subscription. On second that 
if all you've got is a dollar, vote for Steve Stiles and send Terry Carr your dollars 
ghou knows Terry, Steve and TAFF need it more than I do. 


The above paragraph was designed, drafted and constructed by the Society to Fill 
Up The Bottom Of The Page. Not a religious organization, and thanks for liste 











Harlan Ellison first burst on the scene 
in the early 1950*8, and he has been with us 
ever since, save i'or a short hitch in the 
army.. As a fan, I-.arlan was known for insane 
sehticks and for being the first of the Loud 
neofen. 

Since 1955, Harlan has been known as a 
professional writer; as a writer, in fact, to 
Be watched, And watched he was; his fiction 
was criticized by those whose measures were 
that of fandom rather than of professional 
writing, and Harlan himself is still thought 
of as a fan first, and onl$r incidentally a 
writer. 

But writer he is, and a dynamic one, 
iiarlan is no longer a wet-nosed neo, brashly 
putting people down at conventions. He i3, 
instead, a fully professional writer with an 
impressive list of credited books, stories, 
and tv and movie scripts to his name. There 
are many who disagree with him, including myself 
over many points But not to realize that 
Harlan bill son is one of the most dynamic forces 
in modern sf is sheer folly. This special section 
is published in tribute to, and possibly in spite 
of, his many talents, 





















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by Le e H 


emson 

off man' 


How . can one begin to describe Harlan Ellison? To say that he is a human being is 
like saying that lightning is a meteorological phenomenon—it 1 s true and elemental, 
but it is far from adequate. One might say that each id a brilliance, that lights the 
field of vision, present long enough to impress the senses profoundly but gone from 
sight before one can completely focus cn.it. When I visualize Harlan, I imagine his 
face—sharp and intense-—but trailing images of itself Mke, those open shutter photo¬ 
graphs of headlights on a highway at night. An impression of Harlan is not a static 
thing—motion is an essence of the subject. Motion and energy—one might ’start to 
describe him as pure energy compacted into humap form. 

Harlan first blazed across my field of vision nigh fifteen years ago at a Mid- 
wescon. Engulfed in a cloud of pipe-smoke and a patter of monologues, he was a sharp- 
feajmred, quick-tongued young fan who could charm his audience and cut deep at his 
victims. Harlan made friends quickly xn those days—and enemies eoually quickly. He 
was outspoken and direct, opinionated and never afraid to speak hi,s mind. 

When I saw him at the Westdrcon this year, ; the haze of pipe-smoke was thinner, 
the patter of monologues more polished. Harlan charmed and entertained his audience 
with the skill of a professional. Still outspoken and direct, with a wit more fine- 
honedthan ever, he is probably still as capable as ever of making quick enemies. He 
is still ..opinionated, still unafraid to speak-out . But now his opinions are more con¬ 
sidered and his arguments more matured. He, has a lot to say—a lot which is well worth 
listening tp. . ... . 4-- 

Harlan is a seeker after truths. He storms’battlements and attacks subjects 
with such force, that occassiohally members of his audience are dazzled by the pyro- 
techniques and miss the -points—the goals he’s striving .after. And then there are 
some members of the audience who still think of Harlan Ellison as the brash young 
fan he was almost a decade and a half ago—-who know him only by an image which has 
been perpetuated through the wealth of Harlan Ellison Stories still in circulation. 
(Harlan hiinself tells these stories with masterful artistry.) To accept only a super— 
ficial and distorted image of Ellison—-to shrug off his statements without consider- 
’ at i° n is not only unfortunate, it’s intellectual blindness. One may not always agree 
with his conclusions, but the ideas deserve ardamned lot'of thought. 

Harlan's speech at the Westercon banquet, where he was guest of honor, brought 1 
down the. house. It was a masterpiece of spoechmaking., and in one way I feel sorry for 
those people who will; only read the printed words without being able to see and hear * 

16 " ,'ilB 



Harlan,himself, But. on the other hand, making the speech, Harlan was also overwhelm¬ 
ing his .audience with the intensity of this own personality. It will be easier to give 
.studied consideration to;his ideas when reading the words than it was while listening 
to him speak them. 

Despite his dazzling displays of humor, Harlan Ellison is an intensely serious 
young roan. Be has always written "from the gut." He lives the same way—with a depth 
and intensity of emotion; He experience^ life and environment with the whole of him¬ 
self. And from his very beginnings as a writer, he has struggled to express this ... 
depth of feeling in his work. 

Financially, Harlan is a successful writer. Artistically, he’s-been acclaimed 
by readers, critics and fellow-writers. But yet, in a very important sense, he has 
not yet succeeded. He is still an experimenter with ideas, still a seeker within 
himself as well as in the world around him. And there is an essence of Ellison which 
is still untapped. . 

I feel that when the day comes that Harlan finds the way to express that essence 
in words, you’re going to see the bright lightning of genius on the printed page., 

—Lee Hoffman 

i i"’";' ‘ ‘• ; July 1966 . . 


HARLAN ELLISON 

.TED WHITE 


The 1957 Kidwestcoh was my first. I had been to two worldcons, and was a f*irly 
active, ; well-known fan. But I was not too familiar With many of the fane who, made up 
the Midsestcon Bunch at that time. So to some extent, I hovered on the fringes. 

There was a big gag making the rounds. Harlan Ellison was in the Army, .and; some¬ 
one had brought to the con a book about the Army. It was passed from hand to hand, and 
everyone signed the, endpapers and scribbed a note. By the time the book got to me, it 
said things like, kHey Harlan, this'll make a man out of you!* and *How'd a runt like 
you make it into the Army?*, and ^-Where's my sub money to DIMENSIONS, you hastard?* 
and ptjiep epitomes of wit and wisdom. 

I joined in the game, scribbled an insult and my name,'and passed it on to my 
neighbor. ....... 

* . ; -1 have regretted that, felt a deep embarrassment for it, fever since. 

' ' ’ 'T ' + + + + + + + + + + + • I .W 

I first came into contact with Harlan in 1953. Early-that year, I'd,drawn a cover 
for Joel Nydahl's VEGA, and Joel, who was a flash-in-the-pan BNF, suggested to Harlan 
that he get in touch with me. Harlan was then publishing a fanzine called SCIENCE FAN* 

17 





2inl l K2 N | + it had P reviou sly been the CLEVELAND SCIENCE FANTASY RITTTTtttm 

zme. by now it was averaging sivtv + n r *«AAoi BULLETIN, a club- 

-* ■" “ “S3 s-£,“ SU—,™ 

js,« "rr^^wn: — >.. 

have been Bert Hirechman—but it was concerned^wi + h ° n t r ® ca11 the author—it might 
dxd three or four wretched drawings in India inwV 1 ? 0 ? ^ ravel 1x1 some fashion. I 
that was the last I was aked^o df fo? sKJ* (whl ° h 1 had no °ver), ind 

appart!” 16 ^ DD “ I0MS > and had two more issues, close to a year 

was a buddy of Harlfn' as Harlan°led a tT* ^ John MagnU8 ' who 

ment store to buy ties for Roger Sims nr . S ma , r h D p 1 n led a bunch of us to a depart- 
give directions to a man working on a'light Si Ge0r f Young > Posing on the way to 
the department store. g llght P ° le > and cau ^ng a total commotion in 

tag ^ *5? but 1 —to 

from the mezzanine together and I told ™ e T W ® re walking down the stairs 

was only becoming 6onscS'o?1oL ^tbS^on Ld £“f the " ay he dr «^-I 

ass - s- 

He.ll tell yon what a great 

Sure," I said. "I'd sub to it if you weren't sending it to me anyway..." 

ing SoffSgSfHS^ a^dlhfDer^^ “? T t0 **» «• 1 « =»ar- ‘ 

with Fred Prophet, but rnfm^or?ifa littS dS Tr (I th ?!* 1 shor " 1 a bad 

awake to say, "Hey, that neat little portable^ !„1 1 ” cadd Ha tlan shaking me 

some money down and' said he'd send me the remain!?. Sluter/ " " e 

on thetpHeS a living 

the con. I didn't have much more chance to talk vlsit him S,r!>r ' 

ask him-about the money he owed me. He told me h^ ha“ ^ 

.& S U^BM^ 0 Sc5T»*“• 1 «**'■<*- 

+ + + + + + + + + 4.4. 

i-ortSSS^^.flX^S’^StS°d k S 3 t,;e He t dW t schtlcfca ' but a *»- 

walk up to a total strange?, and lau^h^nto a^^^hh^u 61 ^^ • ^ suddenl y sto P us all, 
al helpless laughter, while the stranger grew more WhlCh con ™ lsed us all in tot- 
and his friends. g S more and more puzzled by this crazy man . 

who, at the SebSitlV" That was the Harlan 

failure of all his passenger, with £b i?sa?e SivjT 1 ’ near l y cauMd the *>«“*- 
drive onto the sidewalk and corner a hauledH f’ Vising in headlong flight to 
allthe time, "We're late JlZlt *2~~> 


18 


I was part of the Fublic* an admiring member of the audience of dull people who 
were enlivened by this-energetic performer in our midst. I saw Harlan exclusively in 
his Public facet. I heard his explanation, with running dialogues, of how LOWDOWN 
Magazine had printed his picture as "Cheech Beldone," a juvie’ hood, and butchered 
his article, I watched with something close to awa, as he took command of a fancy 
expensive restaurant. Harlan was the Swinger in fandom. The Rest of us were Clods. 

But not everyone appreciated this fact. Many were jealous of Harlan, and more 
were rubbed.the wrong way .by his mannerisms, his usurpation of the spotlights. When 
$rhe Subject of Harlan Ellison came up at parties, there were two kinds of Harlan 
Ellison stories that would be told. On the one hand, there were the funny things, the 
What-a-gassy-thing-happened-the-last-tim'e-I-was-out-with-Harlan variety. But there 
were also the cruel ones, the ones about That Bastard Ellison, and How I really Screw¬ 
ed Him Up, which, in the right company, would be greeted with howls- of. glee. 

I never enjoyed those stories. An adolescent underdog myself, I didn't get much 
kick out of the stories of How I Shat On Harlan. I had as much reasort'as any of them 
to dislike Harlan — it was years before I got the rest of my money from him — but 
somehow I'd never been able to worl up.a goodi hate against him. . 

. When Harlain moved back to New York in I960, I was living here. And', to my surprise 
he looked me up. As a matter of fact, he ended up staying .in my apartment until he m.-' 
could find one for himself — on e which turned out to be in the.same block* He'd 
broken with his first wife, and turned his back on ah editorial .job with Bill Ham- 
ling in Chicago, and now he was back in NYC, freelancing. . 

It was in this period "that I. got to know Harlan as a person, to see him with his 
defenses down, the Private- and real Harlan Ellison. 

• ’++'+ 4 - + +.+’+ + + + ■ •. . | 

There were a few stormy moments betweeh us. Harlan is such a totally volatile r' 

person that there had to be. But 1 Will say this here and now: if I liked Harlan - 
Ellison before — and then it could^only have been the attraction of the glamor he 
attached to himself —.1 liked.him better now. Harlan was a good friend. Although 
3,000 miles seperate- us now, and,.we, see each other infrequently, I would like to 
think that we remain gbod friends. Each of us was in the other's debt more than-once, 
during the time, Harlan lived iri New York; we did a great deal together. We drove all 
over the city in Harlan's Austin-Healy -— I was one of the few he would trust to drive 
it for him — we visited editorial,offices together, took in concerts, jazz clubs, 
restaurants. It was an exciting period -fop.me. And a valuable one. Harlan taught me a 
lot about writing,'directly .and indirectly, and was responsible for my first sale to 
ROGUE. .. • . 

+ + +. ;+ + + + + + + •. 

It was during-this -period that the-rAffair of My Typewriter was resolved. . . - " 

Harlan had never ‘finished paying me. His problem was that he had enjoyed almost 
no use of the machine. He had taken it home with him from the Clevention, and almost v 
as soon as he was back in NYC, Ken Beale had borrowed it. Ken hocked it, and lost the 
ticket. So Harlan had no typer, and .no mesuis to get it back. 

I960 was the year of the FittCon, and also ,thd -year Eric Bentcliffe won TAFF 
and Joy and Sandy Sanderson left Inchmery anbf 1 emmigrated to the US — specifically, 
to the Bronx. '' ' ' 



^ r?o f i Er n° nh h~- «*• «•»• 

in honor of the Sandersons And when Harlan ~ + iw the xt turned out to be more 

Harlan spoke a few thJeateAw Harlan got there, he found Ken Beale in attendance 

ror the tV'v^iw *“ *** «f the f 

whom he still owed. 3 stolen, so that Harlan could pass it along to me, 

nett a Sd"?eeIw V lS? r % ,md e r - h<! »>■«*• •.^ni indig. 

that 

T hm ef B “ ££ ***■ 

raided firlln'^a^tment? * afternoon > Wo C0 P S from the narcotics squad 

3’“ ™”~rs 

ed to let them conduct a thorough search. slander against him. He volunteer- 

They found no narcotics, of course. 

.22 revolver^ a swit chblad“kni fe! ‘ and'a Jet’^/braSs'knuck?' These n h£dV “ft 

d - ““ ~s ■ 

Stated ^i. th ' harsh *" ** ' ‘ 

a gir^Uv^hSriVbSlSng *g2t S" d * 7 . I < dr f™ h * r — Linda Soican, 

Ian's car. It was a rain^ \ Z ° th ® Criminal coufct * building in Har- 

last one we've had. fheron SinL elrlanr^^ 3 ^ New *>rk City, the 

arraignment. The judge droned on in a Wad ^ time> met us * This Ws th® 

edgewiae, set bal?, Z S "* * WhoBt Harl “ • — 

The T™SrhS S di^sSd Md^set Smfas'well'the^St T 'Sft 0 ?, ** ”” 3ai1 ’’ ' 
ten8d “ d LTbeen 

you •*•** ,0 "' tWn ® out ° r «*»• >% don’t 

it up, tell people aSut^S Se oStr«i, 'mt ?* trU ~ t *. t « ^he VOICE, ’’Writ, 
a way that -might do: some real constructive gSd!" °“ ° c<5m ””i“te it in 

"You're right, ,Ted,", he said. % 

mastheadr"B^ED W IN k m a iO&s? h MS E ELLlS!^ y) '*** ° Ut Mith a banner over th « 


20 


me progression of events after that was steam-roller-lik.. The wire-services 


had run an item on Harlan's arrest; his doorman had tipped them off. Early versions 
made it sound like Harlan was a gun-running junkie. Various fans picked up the item 
and some of them made gleeful noises -- boy, Harlan had sure gotteri his , now! 

The charge was eventually dismissed, but in the meantime Bill Hamling had seen 
the Voice piece. He wanted Harlan to do it over as a book. Harlan had remarried. He 
needed steady employment. That fall he and his wife moved back to Chicago, and Harlan 
launched the Regency Books line under Hamling. The sixth book released was the one 
the idea of which had been responsible for the line: Memos from Purgatory , by Harlan 
Ellison. 

On the back of the title page is.a note: "NOTE: Brief passages*from BOOK TWO: 

•The Tombs' appeared in The Village Voice...as 'Buried In The Tombs, 1 And are used 
here in greatly expanded form.." 

But, on the facing page —"When the dark begins to close in around you, a 
friend can be identified by the candle he carries. So this book is dedicated To TED 
E. WHITE.» v 

That's the first and only time a book has been dedicated to me. And as Harlan 
mentioned at the ester con this year, "I don't dedicate books lightly, you know, Ted.!' 

• I appreciate that. 

And, more important, I appreciate Harlan Ellison. To me it is less important what 
he is -- be it science fiction writer, tv or movie scripter, or just a bombastic and 
dynamic fan — than who he is. Vi/ho he is is Harlan Ellison, a good and valuable 
friend. 

— Ted White, 1961$ . 

• the •-•‘b’ 

/ JET-PROPELLED 
by bird bath 

^*q*b*e*r#t s*i*lw*e*r*b*e*r*g* 

I first met Harlan Ellison at the 1953 world s-f convention, in Philadelphia. 

Our previous contacts had been by mail and telephone; but I spotted him almost.the 
instant I had entered! the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel. He was the -littl-e guy in the cen¬ 
ter 'of the crowd, doing all the talking and obviously holding the audience in the 
palm of his hand. . 

"Ellison?" I said. "Silverberg." 

He said something snide, and a deep and strange friendship was born. 

Two Ellison episodes of that 1953 convention stand out clearly. One took place. 
on the*final night. In the hotel lobby. A certain New.York fringe fan named Joe Semen¬ 
ovich had taken offense at some remarks of Harlan's, and had come to the'convention 
that Monday to "get" him, bringing along two anthropoid goons. The three’hoods 1 — as- 




sinister-looking as you can imagine — converged on Harlan in the lobby. Any sensible 
man would have disappeared at once, or at least yelled for the nearest bell-hop. to , ^ 
stop the slaughter. But Harlan stood his ground, snarled back at Semenovich nose-to- 
nose, and avoided mayhem through a display of sheer bravado. Which demonstrated one 
Ellison trait: physical courage to the verge of idiocy. Unlike many tough-talking types, 
Harlan is genuinely fearless. •'’* 

The other episode occurred at the banquet of that convention. The toastmaster 
. (Bloch? Asimov?) announced that Harlan and a quondam fan of great gifts named Dave Ish 
had sold a story to Tony Boucher's F&SF. A beaming Harlan confirmed the revelation: 

..the story was called "Monkey Business," I think> and was- 2500 words long, and the pay¬ 
ment had been $100. As a fledgling neopro myself, I felt the tinge of admiration well 
mixed with envy. But the announcement was in error. Harlan and Dave hadn't quite sold 
"Monkey Business" yet; they had merely submitted it. In due time Boucher read it and 
rejected it. It had only seemed, to Harlan's eager imagination, that a story so good 
was certain to be sold. Which illustrates a second Ellison trait: a hunger for liter¬ 
ary success so powerful that it dissolved the distinctions between fact and fantasy. 

For a,long time, Harlan's literary triumphs were of the samq illusory order. In 
December, 1953* he came to New York and visited me at Columbia, where I was then in 
my spphomore year. My roommate was out of town, and he stayed overnight with me. In a 
pizzeria on Amsterdam Avenue we discussed our future plans for professional success. 

In my case the future had already begun, for I had sold a couple of stories and even 
a novel. Harlan> too, had "sold" a novel: a 27,000 word juvenile called STARST0NE. 

Gnome press was going to publish it, he told me proudly. Only it wasn't so. Harlan was # 
anticipating reality again, and reality ultimately failed him. 

He• went back to Cleveland, and I didn't hear much from him for over a year,,I,. * . 

pursuedrmy writing career with indifferent success, scratching obi, a few sales to Bill , , 

Hamling and Bob Lowndes. In the Spring of 1955 Harlan reappeared in New York’, this 
time: to stay. He rented a room on the floor below mine, and set up a literary shop. I 

am still awed by the fastidiousness of his room. Everything was in its place, and 

stayed there. And everything was tasteful, down to a little leather* hassock that I 
bought from him when he felt the pinch of cash, and that I keep In my office to this 
day. He took a job in a bookstqrw : during the day, and wrote s-f at night . 

The summer of 1955 was a long, hot, brutal one for Harlan. He didn't sell a thing. 

There was the famous time when he reported that he had a crime story "90$ sold" to 
Manhunt — for so an editor of that once-celebrated magazine had told him. But the 
editors of Manhunt were pseudonymous myths, the stories were bought en bloc from 
Scott Meredith, and Harlan's story was in the mailbox, rejected, the next day. Getting 
the last 10$ of that sale had been too much. 

A few weeks later he swaggered into my room and declared, "You'll be glad to know 
I bit Campbell today. Bob." I had visions of the towering JWC sagging to the floor of 
his office, blood spouting from' his nose, while Harlan stood aboue him stomping, his 
-...sinus-squirter into ruin. But no: all Harlan meant was that he had Isold a story to ” 
Campbell. He hadn't, though. . 

So it went for him, one imaginary sale after another in a. hellish summer of frus- / 
tration and failure. That I was now selling stories at a nice' clip did'not improve ^ • 
Harlan's frame of mind, for our friendship always had a component of rivalry in it, * 

When Randy Garrett came to tbwh and moved into our building, he began collaborating .* , 
not with Harlan the would-be writer, but with Silverberg, the successful new pro. The 
summer became a daze for Harlan; jeered at froiri all Sides, he clung somehow to his 
.. goal and banged out an'immense, bloated, preposterous novelette cdlled,|CRACKPpT. PLAN- 






ET, He sent it off to If, and then went back to Cleveland to visit his family, 


Now I had read most of Harlan's stories that summer, and many of them 

seemed of full professional quality to me — one called "life Hutch", another 

called "Glowworm". But "Crackpot Planet" struck me as a dog, and I told him 
so. He shrugged. A couple of weeks went by. Then I went to his mailbox down¬ 
stairs to collect his days mail and forward it to him, and there was a letter 
from If. They were buying "Crackpot Planet", all 17,000 absurd words of it. 

It was not Harlan's first sale. Larry Shaw had bought"Glowworm" for his 
new Infinity , and an expose-magazine had picked up something by Harlan about 
kid-gang life. (But that's a story in itself, as Harlan will agree. Eh, Cheech?) 
But those two sales had been to friends of Harlan, and so perhaps were tain¬ 
ted by personal sympathies. The sale to If had been coldly professional: a 
story sent off to a strange editor, an acceptance coming back. Harlan was in. 

There was no stopping him after that. By the end of 1956, he was selling 

at least a story a week, and in the succeeding ten years he's never had much 
difficulty persuading editors to buy his wares. His early work was awkward 
and raw — a weird compound of Nelson Algren and Lester del Rey, in which he 
managed to absorb the worst features of each, meld them, add liberal dollops 
of Hemingway, Y/alt Whitman, Ed Earl Repp, and Edgar Allen Poe, and top off 
with a wild melange of malapropisms, But there was a core of throbbing excite¬ 
ment within all that nonsense, and the inner power remained within him as 
the outer junk sloughed away with maturity. 

For the last few years we've lived on opposite sides of the continent, 
keeping in touch fitfully. I regret that, because Harlan's’recent successes 
in Hollywood and in science fiction have eliminated that residue of envy 
that often tinged our friendship in the 1950's. There are things I have 
that Harlan still covets, but professional success is no longer one of them. 
And, as he knows, there are some things for which I envy him. So old wounds 
are healed and old debts cancelled. 

Not long ago I happened past 114th Street, where-Harlan and Randy and 
I lived that blistering, tense summer twelve years ago. The place looks the 
same from the outside. I wonder how long it'll be before they put the comm¬ 
emorative plaque on the door. 


::Robert Silverberg, 1967: 



BOOKS BY HARLAN ELLISON: 


Rumble 

The Deadly Streets 

The Kan With Nine Lives (The Sound Of A Scythe) 

A Touch Of Infinity 

The Juwies (Children Of The Gutter) 

Gentleman Junkie & Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation 
Memos From Purgatory 
Rockabilly 
The Crackpots 

Don't Speak Of Rope (with Avram Davidson) 

Ellison Wonderland 
Paingod & Other Delusions 


WORDS BY HARLAN ELLISON: 

The vagaries of the human spirit, particularly 
in times as debilitating and sorrowful as 
these, seem almost to stack the deck against 
lasting friendships. 

I.have.the feeling.it is necessary to know what 
a writer stands for, in what he believes, what 
it takes to make him bleed, before a reader should 
be asked to care about what the writer has 
written. 

I have the unseemly habit of going naked into the world* 

"How did you come to write this story?" I am 
frequently asked, whether it be this story, or 
that one over there, or the soft pink-and-white 
one in the corner. Usually, I shrug helplessly. 

My ideas come from the same places yours come 
from: Compulsion City, about half an hour out of 
Inspirationsville. 

...1 fear for the safety of my country and its 
people from this creeping paralysis of the ego. 

Trends knock me out, frankly. 

There is an unreality here that superimposes 
itself over the normal continuum, effecting a 
world-view much like that observed through a 
dessert-dish of Jell-0. 

...this is the real thing, we all go splat a week 
from next Wednesday. 

;— from Paingod & Other Delusions & 
Ellison Wonderland 







edited 

flED WHITE 




























A fancy EDITOR’S NOTE* 


When the transcription if Harlan's speech was handed t« me, it was a mess. The 
typist> a commercial secretary with no knowledge ef sf *r fandom, and, I should guess, 
not much experience with transcriptions, had strung tegether long paragraphs with a 
few commas and dashes, had arbitrarily punctuated the rest, and generally made the 
work unreadable* Andy Pirter went through the ms and checked it against the tape and 
made corrections. He sent it ti Harlan, who was quite busy at that time, and who took 
one look at the thing and threw up his hands in disgust. Harlan gave it to me at the 
Tricon, saying that he thought it would require a lot of work, because so much of it 
was full of casual speech patterns: the extemporanlty^of the ecaaaibnn which reflected 
itself in "You know*s and "I mean"s of which nearly every freely delivered speech 
will have a quota. 

I have dawdled over the editing, and I accept the responsibility for this delay, 
because when I got home with the speech and read it, I felt much as Harlan had. The 
opening portions, anecdotal in nature, are the worst in that respect, especially since 
it begins (in the ms.) with "VOICE: ...and I said, I've reached a point now," ets,, 
which implies that the tape did not catch the opening. - 

I have edited most of the redundancies and false starts out. But I haven’t tried 
t« change the speech into a written article, with all the ( formality which that implies^. 
I think that is unnecessary and self-defeating. This was a speech, given by the guest 
of honor at the 1966 Westercon. It is not a tightly written article originally inten¬ 
ded for publication and the scrutiny of each sentence and word. It was extemporaneous, 
and thus to an extent spontaneous. (I cut an exchange when Harlan suggested it was too 
hot for jackets and doffed hi3.) It should be read as such. Harlan was addressing a 
live audience. It was a warm and responsive audience (I was there), and while it arg¬ 
ued later over the issues Harlan had raised, it did not quibble that he named only 
two of the "three warring coteries" he mentioned, or that, in responce to a train of 
thought, he might veer into a digression for a time. 

As a matter #f fact, for an unrehearsed speech, for a speech not read from a cl 
cleanly typed sheaf of papers, it was amazingly well structured. I haven't tampered 
with its structure at all, I don't agree with all his points — Harlan warned that I 
wouldn't — but I think he presented them forcefully and well, and the speech was 
certainly well received by the whole audience. 


— Ted White 


faftRifln 

seiuson 


I've reached a point now where I don't mind people who've known me for like ten 
or twelve years who come up and hit me with a shot: I don't mind that at all because 
I know where they're, at. They're consistent. But people that I've met for the first 
time who think they have the right, the audacity to come up and —bam'! bagi!~ give me 
a real zinger, and I'm supposed to stand there and say, "ha ha, you're right, I'm an 
imbecile..." As. I told Lee Hoffman, I've just about had it, I resent it and they don't 
really know who I am, or where I'm at, or what I do. All they know is that thirteen 
years ago I was a snot-nosed kid, and I'm not snot-nosed any more and they resent it. 
And Lee said, "They're never going to forgive you for starting where they started and 
going further and then rubbing their noses in it." It set me to remembering — it set 
me extrapolating, and to drawing some conclusions. The conclusions that I've drawn are 
all inextricably involved with the work that I've been doing and which I hope some of 
you like . 

Many of you may remember stories that I wrote seven, eight years ago, that I 
wrote for money, and wrote because, as I said elsewhere this convention, and Ted Stur¬ 
geon has said very kindly, I have to keep working. I have to keep my muscles limbered, 
and if that means writing garbage from time to time, okay, I'll write whatever I have 
to write to keep working. 

But the conclusions that I've drawn, I am sure are going to offend you. And the 
offense is going to be greater for those of you who have known re for a long time, 
who've known me for years. It's certainly going to infuriate Ted White and A1 Lewis, 
not to mention that staunch coterie who still contend that Doc Smith, God rest his 
wonderful soul, is the highest pinnacle of excellence any science fiction writer can 
attain. I knew Doc Smith and admired him vastly and would be a snot-nose again if I 
denegrated him. His work is something else. 

So, I have to build a solid groundwork for these insults, and.that requires tell¬ 
ing a couple of stories. 

Now.I suppose that generically, these are Harlan Ellison stories, because they're 
about me, but in a sense they're apocryphal. First a foornote: 

A year or so ago, I did a television show that I liked a lot, and when I knew it 
was coming on I sent out some post cards to people saying> Please watch this thing. 
Everybody interpreted it as log rolling for a Hugo nomination. They were saying, You 
dirty huckster you, you swine you! Like it was terrible that I'd said, "I did a nive 
thing, would you like to look at it?" They all said. That's not right; you're not su— 
possed to mention these things. SO I suppose this part of my talk will be considered 
Log rolling again for a Hugo and if so. Vote, kids. It's stiff competition. 

Ten years ago the first Milford Science Fiction Writers Conference was held by 
Damon Knight up in Milford, Pike County, Pa., a nice idyllic spot. I wrangled myself 
an invitation. I think I had about eight or ten stories published, and I was living 
,in the same building with Bob Silverberg, and writing furiously ten thousand words a 
night. Most of it was not really worth reading. (I had written at this point the story 
that James Blish called the worst single story he ever read in his life...He's right! 
It's awful!) I went up there,for the conference, and I had some very firm ideas about 
what I believed a science fiction writer should do. I had not at that point realized 

11 ; 27 




















that I was not a science fiction writer, I was a writer, and one is not the other. 

So, there I was, this little guy who had not published very much, and I was sur- % 
rounded,by Sturgeon and Algis Budrys, and Charlie De Vet, and Cyril Kornbluth, for 
God sakes, and Fred Pohl, and Damon Knight. I stood around and God, it was like being 
at Mount Rushmore. 

And they came down on me, man, like Rutley Quantrell's army. They wiped up the 
floor with me. If I opened my mough and said, "Uh," they said,"What doy uo mean, ; •• rV 
'Uh'?" Everybody's a critic. "'Uh'? What is that?" I had brought, along my typewriter. 

I bring along my typewriter everywhere. I had it up in the room up there and I would 
go up and I would peck out a few paragraphs, a few lines, and they were saying, That 
smart-ass—what is he doing with a, typewriter, trying to show us up? What is he, a 
wise guy? 

I could do nothing right. They made me feel like two and a half pounds of dog meat 

I never went ba.ck to the Milford Conference. I couldn't hack it. It really took 
something out of me. I went back to New York and brooded like crazy.. I didn't know if 
I was any good. All I knew was that I knew how to put down words on paper and people 
bought them. But at that time, I -thought maybe that was the end. It isn't, and I 
learned that shortly thereafter. 

Last year, I went back to Milford. 

They have this Writer's Workshop and throughthe seven days of the conference ev¬ 
erybody lays out a story on a big table and then everybody discusses it. But only 
those who've laid out a story, who put it on the line, can talk, can make a comment. 

No wives are allowed, no girlfriends, no chicken flickers, nothing; just the workers. 

This workshop table is filled with stories, and they change'them every day; they 
have a list of who is going to be talked about on that day. There were bits and pieces 
of stories that hadn't sold, short stories that were rejected maybe ten, twelve times 
and they couldn't figure out why, maybe a portion of a novel in work and they wanted 
some comment on it, things like that. Well I don't have any of those. I sell what I 
write, everything I write. So I went up to the Tom Quick Inn, which is where I was 
staying, and I sat down and wrote a short story, which I had, been thinking about for 
some time, and I put it on this table, and the procedure is that you sit here and they 
go around the room from the left of you. Everybody comments once, what they thought 
of the story. They've all read it the-night before and they lay it on you, you know; 
they really come on. There was a pretty sizeable bunch of people there, like Keith 
La lamer and Norman Spinrad, and Larry Niven; Damon Knight was there and his wife, Kate 
Wilhelm; Tom Disch — a bunch of professionals — Sonya Dorman, who's a marvelous 
writer; she writes under the name of S. Dorman.(Please look for her stories; they're 
excellent. There is one in the new Orbit collection that Damon Knight published.) 

I laid this story out with a couple or three carbons, so everybody could get a 
chance at it the night before. 

Point: When I sat down to write this story, I said, I am going to write a story ' 
that is going to knock them on their ass. I'm going to write a story so good that they , 
can't ignore it. I'm going to write a story to get even for ten years ago — that's 
how good that story's going to be, and it's going to be a prize winning story. 

So, anyhow, they started talking about it and there's a coterie up there composed 
of Damon Knight, his wife Kate Wilhelm, their current fair haired boy, Tom Disch, who 
couldn't write his way out of a pay toilet if he had to, a few other people; they're 
all on one side of the room. Keith Laumer, and Norman Spinrad and Larry Niven are on 



the other side of the room and there's a bunch of other nice people sitting around, 

It started off with Damon, 

Wow, Damon was putting together,the first Orbit collection, and he was looking 
for stories, so I said, "I'd like to submit this to you, Damon, if. you like it." So 
he read it the night before, and it was Damon'who set the tone. He said, "This is... 

I don't know what you're doing here, Harlan, I really don't. I don't understand this 
story, I don't know what it means, I don't know what you're going for." And I don't 
say anything, I’m sitting there, quiet. I'm cool. 

Next, it's Kate Vilhelm. "You know I was reading this last night and I'm forced 
to concur with Damon’s opinion, I find this story derivative and unappealing, and 
stupid and dumb and badly typed and everything, you know..." Man, I type the cleanest 
first draft in the world, baby. 

So, we worked out way through the friends of Damon Knight Society and we got 
around the other side of the room. Keith Laumer said, "This is one of the most brill- 
iant stories I've ever read. It's fantastc; I love it. I think it's great." Then we 
hit Walter iioudy and he daid, "I think it's a classic. I've never read anything quite 
like this. It's new, it's fresh, it's different." 

One half of the room despised it; it was awful. Damon, needless to say, rejected 
it from Orbit, and the other side of the room loved me. So Fred Pohl was coming up 
for the last day, and before Damon could get to him, I, hit him with this story and 
asked. Do you like it? He read it on the spot, and he said Yeah, I'll give you a top 
rate in ; Galaxy for it. I said. Thanks a lot, and he bought it. That story, "Repent 
Harlequin/ Said The Ticktock Man," was in Fred Pohl's Galaxy, it was picked by Terry 
Carr and Don bollheim for the World's Best Science Fiction : 1966 , and it won the Science 
Fiction Writers of America Nebula, which Damon had to give me. 

And as if that weren't insult, we added the injury because Doubleday is publish¬ 
ing the SFWA Nebula award anthology, and it's right in there, and Damon's got to edit 
it and say something cool about it. And now it's up for the Hugo and it's gonna lose 
to Zelazny naturally, but I don't mind, because I've proved my point. 

I'm going back to Milford this year and I'm going to give them another chance. 

It seems incredible that a field as small as ours could support as handsomely 
and with as much room as it does, three warring coteries of writers. I'm not sure 
many of us are even aware of it, because we take what is given to us in science fic¬ 
tion magazines and since we have a limited number of editors we get pretty much what 
they.like. But we're in the middle of a vast upheaval in'the science fiction field. 

And I would like to try and really go into it at great length and bore the ass off you. 

The three coteries, to begin with. First of all, there's Damon Knight's group, w 
which I like to refer to as Damon Knight 1 s group, and which will hereinafter be re¬ 
ferred to as Damon Knight's group. These are the people who accept only that which 
they like and they have positions of a certain amount of authority—Damon's an editor 
at Berkley Books, and his wife Kate ilhelm is a writer and Damon edits Orbit —there's 
this whole thing going there. They get people like Tom Disch published, and since Judy 
Merril is also in that in-group, she writes a lauditory review of The Genocides in 
F&SF. The book is not a very good book, to be nice about it, and from her review we'd 
ha ve thought we had a new Nathaniel 'Zest in our midst. 

Then on the other side, we've got A1 Lewis' group. Now A1 Lewis believes that 
stories of science fiction...I realize I'm putting words in your mouth, and you'll be 
able.ito shhot me down later, but since this is my group, baby, you'll have to sit there 
and put up with it. Al's feeling—and I'm sure that this is not exactly precise—his 






idea of the man of the future is standing on thsi slidewalk going through future 

time and he looks around and says, ■fllaok at this fantastic world that we live in, 

isn't it incredible, I say to you, Alice of the future 20432209, isn't this a grand * £ 

world in which the buildings rise up a full screaming two hind-red. feet into the air, . ~ 

isn't this a marvelous slidewalk that's going at 25 miles an hour, and we have one 

over there that goes at 35 miles an'hour, and another one right next to it at 45 mile& 

an hour, to which we can leap, if we want to...f : 

•A1 believes that technology is the single motivating force in our culture and 
A1 is wrong, but I'm not about to argue with him on that point. I think this field is 
big enough to support all'kinds of dumb things. That isn't important. We sitting here i. 
are the last of the fastest guns in the west. We may find it a little difficult to 
understand. 

For, I don't know how many years I've been kicking around, about thirteen or 
fourteen, something like that, but Christ, Forry Ackerman, you've been what — 35 
years in the field? 

VOICE: Forty. 

Forty. That's even more frightening. All right for 40 years science fiction fans 
have been saying. we're not Buck Rogers . You know, like we've got some substantiality,: 
we've got things we can teach you. We're going to the moon. "You're going where?" "We- 
r'e going to the moon." I've got a copy of an article that was written in the Cleve¬ 
land News back in '52, when I was in the Cleveland Science Fiction Society, and they 
sen this reporter down to laugh at us, and he came down and he did a whole nice big * 

thing, and you know, "the room tiled at full momentum as these people decided that 
we were going to the moon." I mentioned to him about Heinlein's sliding roadways. You 
know, we could use them for conveying•freight and things like that and you know he ‘ 
did this whole article with just this kind of tongue in cheeck kind of crap that you're 
seen a million times after a science fiction convention or some magazine will write 
thinking they're very cute and clever and not realizing that they are 40 years out of * 
date. 

But we've always said, respect us, look at us; we've got something, for Christ's 
sake, we're over here, you know. Ignore the western,, ignore the detective story, and 
forget Salinger for a minute, we're over here. Right? Veil, baby, I hate to shake up 
your nervous system, but that's been happening for about ten years. We are no longer 
way out there in the back eddy. The big boys are coming to us and they're looking at 
what we're doing. A copule of days before we came here, Theedore Sturgeon and I — 
we're both working doing scripts for the Bob Hope Chrysler Theatre—Ted had gone up 
there to see Gordon Hessler, one of the Producers, and met Gordon and sat and talked , 
to him for a while. I went up a couple of days later, and I walked in and Gordon came 
out from behind his desk. He's a lovely charming man and he said, "Hi, Harlan; I want 
you to meet John O'Swarz, who is from France," and this little guy, this little in- < 
tense dark; -electric cat leaped out of his’ chair and came over and grabbed my hand 
with both of his and pumped it like crazy and said, "Monsieur Ellison I'm overwhelmed, 

T do not know what to say, to meet you, to find -out that you are alive, that you ex¬ 
ist, you are...In one week to meet Theodore Sturgeon; and Harlan Ellison in one room ^ , 
is fantastic." He haid, "We know your work over there, every story of yours. We know 
you more than Salinger, more than Hemingway, more than Steinbeck, we know you arid Stur-- * 
geon." We're underground heroes over there. And it scares the crap out of you. when * v 
someone comes from way over there.*.and it also annoyed me because I haven't gotten 
one dime from reprint money over there. 

We are accepted. We're there . Stop pushing. (That's a good line from me. I'll 
have to remember that.) 





The man sitting here: Digby Deal from Los Angeles l agazine . He 1 s doing an artic¬ 
le on us. He doesn't say anything, he just comes and.sits, and he does. Stanley Kub¬ 
rick is doing a picture with Arthur C. Clarke. He called for Arthur C. Clarke, and 
he said, ''Look, I want to do this science fiction picture in Cinerama and I want you 
to do a book and I'll do the screenplay and we'll exchange bylines, me on your book 
and you on my movie, and we'll do a whole thing," Yeah, that's cool. 

Isaac Asimov gets Fantastic Voyage in the Saturday . Evening Post . He doesn't get 
a dime for it. That's another story. That's power politics. 

The ABC Froject '67 series: T. ey go and get Robert Sheckley, and Robert Scheck- 
ley does a show for them. An hour original. 

Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek : When he started the project he had his staff com¬ 
pile a book of the top 1000 scidnce fiction stories, which he sent out to all the wri¬ 
ters who might possibly work on the series, with:this admonition: ^These are the best; 
we want better , we want different . Don't try to cop these ideas, because we know where 
they're'at, rights That' s Roddenberry, he goes and he hires top TV writers like 
Adrian Spees, and John D.F. Black, who just w6n the Writers Guild Award, and Barry 
Trivers, who won it a couple of years ago. But in addition he hired Sturgeon and he 
had Phil Farmer working for him and he had A,E, Van Vogt writing for him, and I'm 
writing for him and Robert Bloch is writing for him and Jerry Sohl and Robert Sheck¬ 
ley, , .anybody he can get hold of who knows anything at all about writing for the visual 
medium, who is a science fiction person. He wants to do it right. No more giant ants, 
or plant aphids that eat Cleveland, none of that. This is the real scan. 

Every month you go in your bookstore and there are new books—in paperbacks, in 
hardcovers. What do you think all this is? Chopped liver? I mean, they know who we are. 
But we don't know who they are. We're still fighting the Civil War, friends. We're 
still back there screaming help, help, we're not dumb, we're not dumb. They know we're 
not dumb. And the more we aregue about it, the more they cease to hear us, because 
we've now reached a noise level where no one's paying attention. 

What I'm trying to say is that the main stream has accepted us, but we haven't 
accepted the main stream. We're still back here playing power politics. All us little 
fans are still doing our little convention thing and having our little internecine 
warfare and we're afraid. We're petrified to go out there and stand up and maybe get 
a belt in the belly. 

Now this fear and terror by fandom of being assimilated is like the same thing 
that every ethnic group has ip its ghetto, like "you're gonna marry him, he's a goy 
what Is that?" Right? 0r"I don't wanna see our race mongrelized." That's exactly what 
it is. We're afraid to get into the big stream. Somebody like a Herman Wouk will come 
along and do "The Lomocome Papers"— you all remember that garbage— and we'll say 
Well, see: that's what's going to happen to us. But we ignore Cat's Cradle and we ig¬ 
nore White Lotus and we ignore Clockwork Orange and we ignore Only Lovers Left Alive 
and all of these pure science fiction books, which are do$e by people outside the 
field, who have taken the ideas that we've put iorth, who have used all of these tre¬ 
mendous concepts that we spent 35 years developing and they're using them; it's a 
matter of course for them. They say, "Sure these guys have proved it already; we don't 
have to. We can go ahead from there." 

Now, what I'm trying to say is that we've become important to the mainstream. 

Truly important. This is steam engine time for science fiction. It's science fiction 
time , Science is passing us by.' We're on the moon and we're doing the freezing the 
bodies thing, and Time Tunnel comes on TV this Fall (it's a piece of crap, but it 
comes on, and people will know what it's all about, going back in time; they'll.be 
able to understand that.) So it's our time now, friends. 












Now is when we catch the gravy. • 

Now is when everything pays off for us. • ' 

Now is when a man like Sturgeon is going to collect what, he's been due for all 
these many years. You know: like writing penny a word and two-cent a word stories * 
f? r .the Pulpsj now all of a sudden he's going to get 3, 4, 5, 6, $10,000 for a tele¬ 
vision script, for a book. This is what we deserve. We paid our dues...it's time for 
us now. 

But we're being held back...we're'being fettered in many respects and tornn 
apart by the conservatives. Now, no offense. We're being hamstrung in the magazines 
and in the bo.oks and by the entrenched power structures — you know, the Bamon Knight 
gang—• and by the people among us who are short-sighted, who continue to contend that 
they are the far seekers, that they are the future-seers. They're the ones that still 
want the stories that were written 25, years ago, for Christ's sake. And everytime 
somebody tries to do something new, they say, "Whew, where is this cat at....what is 
.he doing?" It's like in the jazz idiom: a man like Ornet Coleman, 5 to 8 years ago 
started blowing new sounds and a few people picked up on it and said, "this guy has 
got it...this man is saying something." And everybody else s^id, "Huh?" They're scared 
cause they don't know where it's at and they're afraid. They re afraid they're going 
tp get left out in the cold. They're afraid- they're not going au courrant. They're not 

going to be with it, and so they put it down. And thct's what is happening to an awful 

lot. of important science fiction. 

A manlike David Bunch has been writing for ten years. The only place he could get 
his stuff published until recently was in Ron Smith's Inside Magazine —you know, a > 
fanzine — or a few other places, literary magazines, little places, where he could 
sneak ih in and they didn't know it was science fiction. He would say that this was a 1 
parable of the future. Now Bunch is published in most of the bigger Magazines, and 1 
his work is understood and seen because we have caught up with higi..You know, we thought 
D emolished Man was a big step forward...that was a nice story with a lot of interesting 
typography. The guys who were really writing it — the guys who were really saying it 
— are the guys we have shamefully ignored for years. 

It's a time for daring. Now is the time for brilliance and invention. And no one 

is suggesting that the roots of science fiction be ignored or forgotten or cast aside. 

Solid plotting, extrapolation, trends and cultures, technology — all of these things 
are staples that afce necessary to keep the genre electric and alive because that's 
what we are. That's what makes us not Peyton Ilace. Okay: granted. But why should we 
who know add love this medium see it' expand its frontiers in the hands of William 
Burroughs and John Hersey and Anthony Burgess and Thomas Pinchett while we stare back 
in wide-eyed wonder, because we never considered writing A Clockwork Orange or White 
Lotus or The Crying of Lot 49 or Nova Express ? 

Take a look at Burroghs' Nova Express , friends. Now, that's science fiction and 
it's fresh and it's daring and it's different. And it will beat out any bloody thing 
that James Blish or Damon Knight have written in the last five years. 

Now I don't mean to pick on any single person expressly. There Are dozens of wri¬ 
ters I could point to. Writers whom you respect and if they were standing up here you 
would come up and say, "Can I have your autograph?" And you should, because they paid * 
theyr dues. Mr. Van Vogt was here and I don't know if he still.Js here — I would 
hate to pin him when he isn't here — but Van Vogt's stuff, in many ways was very 
daring...25 years ago. But his stuff isn't there anymore. There are new guys who are 
doing it. 

Why should we have to stand back and wince in pain as the Herman Wouks, the Ayn 

32 ■ 







Rands, the Rosser Reeds demean our literary form? Why should we have to sit there and 
say, "These guys are doing it because we didn't have the guts to do it"? And have to 
put up with their bad writing? We're lucky we've gained a few good writers — writers 
like Burgess. Butwwe've got an awful lot of schleps, too. And it's a pain that we 
have to sit here and put up with it. 

The tragedy of what we are now is the tragedy of what we've been doing for thirty 
years. We've been leaching the vitality but of our best writers — our Sturgeon, our 
Farmer, our Philip Dick, our Kurt Vonnegut. WB've sent them off to bther fields be¬ 
cause they couldn't make a living with us. They had to write for the "in-group." They 
had to write for us and please us and pleasure us because God-forbid they should come 
to a convention and have someone say, "What do you mean — what is Inside-Out side ac¬ 
tually about, Mr. Farmer — what are you trying to say? What are you doing? Ha?" We've 
sent them off to the other field. Vonnegut to the mairistream comedy novel; Sturgeon to 
Westerns, movie adaptations, TV writing; Farmer to white-collar jobs, too many paper¬ 
back committments; Phil Dick to the edge of lunacy. This is what we've done to our 
good writers, because we've been too busy reading the hacks. And why have we been 
reading the hacks? Because we can understand them; they mil give us a nice technolog¬ 
ical thing that we can play with and toy with and masturbate with and we like that a 
lot. But when they really demand something of us, when they write something really 
new and fresh and different and inventive, we don't know where they are. We look at 
them and we say, "You missed that time, but you'll make it the next time; maybe you'll 
write Sian next time, baby." We pomplain that our best men have left us. That they have 
gone on. That they deserted the ship. And_it's precisely the opposite: the ship has 
deserted them. They have outgrown us. They've gone away because they&re bigger than 
us; they need more, they have to have more. And they find it selling mainstream stor¬ 
ies which you laugh at; you say, "Well, you know, if I want to read that crap. I'll 
read the main stream." I'm not talking about book-of-the-month-club selections, friends 
I'm talking about stories that demand inventiveness and demand a bigness; a fullness 
-from the writer that you can't 'get most of the time out of science fiction. 

Because we have literally bound ourselves into a bag that we can't get out of. 

For too long we have allowed those of us who formed our idiom to tell us what is 
good and what is bad. We've allowed them to say, "Well this is a good story, because 
it's in Analog and this has gotta be a bad story because it's in Amazing . Well, now 
if it's in Amazing, probably it's because they're reprinting... 

These writers have grown too big and too important and too dedicated to their art 
and that's the operable phrase. Before they are science fiction writers, they are 
writers , and you can read them in any other idiom, any other genre, and they will be 
just as sharp; they don't demean themselves. Somebody said yesterday, "He was lost in 
Hollywood writing for television," Well, I got so lost last year, friends, writing 
science fiction for television that I won the top award of the Screen Writers Guild. 

I beat out a Purex Special, a Chrysler Theatre, and the pilot for "Run For Your Life" 

—on a show that had a budget like $1.98. And it was pure science fiction — it wasn't 
anything else. 

You don't get lost if you're a writer — if you really work. These people have 
left us for the very simple reason that they're too big and too talented to be con¬ 
strained by our often visious, often ungrateful little back water eddy. They burst 
into the mainstream and the mainstream has taken notice of them. Sturgeon comes to ' 
-Hollywood and Hollywood knows it. His name is in the trade papers, and producers want 
to see him. Alan Arbor used to be .the Producer oh "The Fugitive 1 . 1 ; he's now doing the 
new one, "The Invaders". He calls for Sturgeon. Gene Roddenberry wired ahead to New 
York — "Have Sturgeon there; I must talk to him. I want him to work for me." You 
walk on the set and actors who don't know much of anything except what their own faces 
look like, say "Theodore Sturgeon?" And they know him. This man isn't unknown; no one 







who is good is unknown. And yet at the same time, here we sit and you have the audac¬ 
ity to make me a"Guest of Honor" and I'm nothing — and Vonnegut has never been a 
Guest of Honor; he's never been asked to be a Guest of Honor. Here's a man that has 
written a novel that has been one of the seminal influences in our field. Something 
that almost any writer can look at and say, "Yeah, it's so simple to vn-ite like that 
— that you can It do it." Great art looks simple, but it isn't. It's like watching 
Fred. Astaire dance — try it and you'll fall on your ass. Vonnegut is big — he' s 
important — and we gave the Hugo to Clifford Simak for a novel that any one of us 
who write science fiction could have written. 

It’s a crime. 

It's a shame. 

And we've been doing it for too long. I stand before you as nothing more, really, 
than an emissary of the open mind. If you're going to continue to call yourselves 
science fiction fans — the chosen people ; — we see the future — the golden ones — 
all of that crap we've been swilling down for 25, 30 years, you damn well better be 
able to see what's in your midst. Because you are losing men that you should have wor¬ 
king for you. You are losing men that you are ignoring and laughing at and you're 
losing men who are going to change your form and put it where it's supposed to be: 
on a level with all great art. 


:: transcribed from a speech given at the 19th 
annual West Coast Science Fantasy Conference 
(WesterconXIX), July 4th, 1966. :: 



Let*8 dear 
decks, first: the 
installments of t 



were actually reprints of material \ 

written during 1964-65 for apa F. I 

wrote four to six pages (on the average) every 

week, for over a year, for apa F and apa L. A great deal of it was trivial and 
dated: mailing comments and the like. Occasionally there were story fragments. 

But quite often I used apa F and L as a journal in which I set down some of my 
experiences. The last two columns were reprints of a couple of these. The second 
BEST FROM APA L includes another, a piece I wrote about my first flight as the 
pilot of a small aircraft. I think there are a goodly number of other such pieces 
of what I might call, for lack of a better phrase, personal journalism, still 
languishing in the limited circulation of apa F and L, and in future columns I 
will probably return to them, Andy willing. 

However this time there is a more immediate challenge awaiting me: the 
phenomenon of one Stephen E. Pickering. 

Those Faithful Headers among you will recall that in the last issue of Algol 
there appeared an article by Kr. Pickering, titles "A Question Of Skepticism." 
And, immediately following it, a reply by yours truly, in which I attempted an 
analysis and refutation of the piece. 

The Pickering article was hardly unique; in the last several months, Kr. 
Pickering has had a number of simillar articles published in various fanzines. 

The majority of them seem to hit the same monotonous theme — thnt "fannish fans" 
are anti-intellectual and just all-around Baaad — but even those which do not 
still share the same vices of ultra-sercon pedantry, convoluted writing, and a 



perilous grasp of the subject matter in ouestion. {[•'or a pair of examples of the 
latter, his article on religion in stf in YANDRO was well refuted in a recent issue 
by Diana Paxton; and in an article ijn DOUBLEjBILL in which he reviewed the Ball- 
antine reprints of the EC comi.cs, he betrayed no awareness of the fact that these 

were reprints ..) 

In my reply to lickering, last issue, I was forced to rebutt and analyse 
his article almost paragraph by paragraph, since there was so little coherency 
of thought from one paragraph to the next, and sometimes, indeed, within a single 
paragraph. I was amazed by his affroniery — in the baldness of his gall in off¬ 
ering to an audience more knowledgeable than he himself the sort of muddjr think¬ 
ing, pedantic posturing, and execrable prose which abounded in "A Ouestion Of 
Skepticism." 

I concluded my "Answer" tp Pickering with "I point to Stephen E. Pickering 
as an excellent example of exactly what fandom needs least. In proff, I offer 
his own article as evidence against him." 

I have reconsidered. 

I think fandom does need Pickering, 

Oh, I haven't changed my opinion of either his prose or his subject matter; 

I could hardly have become enamoured of either. But it is exactly these qualities 
in Pickering’s work which, I think, makes him so valuable to fandom. 

Tlckering is the most clearcut example of a Genus Primus Fugghead active in 
fandom in this deeade. 

We’ve had our fuggheads before. There've been the "innocents" like Russell 
K. t/atkins and his "Clean Up Fandom" Crusade, and the dangerous paranoic-scbis- 
ophrenics like George Wetzel and his poison pen campaigns. But one of the most 
lively, Gertrude K, Carr, more or less reti red to the Boondocks (or, "The K3F") 
after the backlash of her campaign against Willis hit her in the form of the 
FANAC-sponsored Boycott GMC&rr Campaign. 

Until she decided to devote her talents to smearing Willis, G.K.Carr was 
one of the best of the Fuggheads, She had a thick hide and a willingness to make 
a fool of herself whenever the situation den&nded it (which it frequently did). 

She was always a storm-canter of controversy, both in FAPA and SAPS, and although 
she was usually under heavy attek frca both apa 8 s best guns, she weathered it all, 
gave as good as she got, and guaranteed that there’d never be a dull moment. FAPA 
hasn't been the seme since she was dropped. And I, for one, shall always miss her. 

The name of the game is Fugghead Baiting. For the game to be successful, the 
Fugghead must not be pitiable, not: just momentarily weak-willed, he must be the 
Genus Primus Fugghead, with few if any redeeming values, save one: he must be 
able to function under fire, and, indeed, to make a continued attempt to draw 
fire. Ue must be unremittantly fmggheaded. 

Fandom needs this. Fans are argumentative sons of bitches, and inclined to 
bicker among themselves when there is no common enemy about. If I were to be en¬ 
tirely to fecitious for the subject, I would guess that the Boondoggle was £ 
result of the lack of a real Fugghead to successfully Bait. 



And this is Stephen K. Pickering’s real value to fandom. To top the list, 
he is openly contemptuous of fandom, referring to fannish fane as ant ^intell¬ 
ectuals Then, among his other virtues, he affects a patronizing attitude, as 
though his articles were words of wisdom to be tossed to the ignorant and un¬ 
washed masses (us) to be eagerly devoured. And, far from least, he is totally 
unable to express himself concisely and clearly, making use as he does of 
words apparently hastily gleaned and misunderstood from an unabridged 

dictionary. 

In the last few months I would guess that Pickering has received more 
attention than any other single figure in fandom. I know this is not the sort 
of thing to be suggested in a fanzine devoted this issue to Harlan Kllison, but 
I think that fans who think of Harlan only as they think of other fans success¬ 
fully turned pro, are much more concerned, at the moment, with the contributions 
Pickering has been spewing out in wild abandon in the fan press, often so pro¬ 
lificacy that he has had to resort to transparent pseudonyms. 

The letter column of almost any fanzine, following the publication of a 
Pickering article or letter, is usually seething, A number of articles have 
been written, iither in outright rebuttal, or in an effort (such as the Paxton 
in YANDRO) to redo Pickerings' 1 botched job as it might better have been done.. 

This latter reaction is one of the best and most constructive, of course. I 
calculate Pickering has caused to be written and published within the last year 
alone at least five worthwhile articles which would not otherwise have been 
written, 

Tickering is an irritant, and fandom needs an irritant. Ghod created the Pugg- 
head to bug fankind, so that we might not grow too slothful nor too smug. 

That’s my thesis. Observe how readily Pickering substantiates it. Contained 
in a box somewhere within the confines of this column is Pickerings’ reply to my 
reply to his article last issue. I’d like you to pause hero, if you haven’t al¬ 
ready, and read this missive. I'll wait. 


+++++++++++ 


Counting his signature, "Stephen T Pickering, Research Consultant/Teacher's 
Assistant, department of Sociology, Bakersfield College," I counted eleven refer¬ 
ences to Pickering "as a sociologist." Almost every other opinion he ventures is 
buttressed with the line or the allusion. HAs a sociologist.a he seems to summ¬ 
arize, &I find Ted V'hite stupid and beneath my notice.u 

As a human being, I find Stephen E„ Pickering a liar. '.Then Andy Porter re¬ 
ceived this missive from Pickering, he couldn’t quite accept Pickering*3 claims 
to sociological status, much less competence. "After all," Andy put it, "I had a 
course in sociology in college myself," Andy made a long distance phone call to 
Bakersfield College. 

His findings: Stephen E, Pickering is a freshman at Bakersfield, kite works 
on the grounds^ wss about all the information they could offer. 

I hardly need to rebutt the remainder of this amazingly pompous piece, but I 
have a few comments, and I appreciate the fact that Pickering numbered his para¬ 
graphs this time. 




As a sociologist, I find hr. White 1 3 criticism of my article somewhat banal; 
hi 3 criticisms are neither valid, not completely relevant to my premises as a 
social scientist, Kr. White has a way of leading one to ultimate antinomies, con¬ 
structed by abstraction, rather than on operational solutions based on a process 
of empiratical research. His treatment of the subject of "fannish" fans. etc., 
all Involve dichotomies that he makes sharper than what they are in actuality, 
and force upon us choices which we can't make. Kr. ’bite, as a fannish fan, pre¬ 
fers one side of each of his self-constructed dilemmas, but if I, as a sociol¬ 
ogist, simply defend the Other Side, then we are forced into an illogical, false 
position. The appropriate answer is not to defend the Other Side, but to show 
why Kr. White's dichotomies are false, 

1. I sent Kr. White one letter, briefly explaining my project of continuing 
Forrest Ackerman's Voice of the Imagination . under a different title, but with 
the same purpose of reflecting the most perceptive material obtainable in that 
subculture known as "fandom," The magazine is near y completed after two years 
of research, and one may find a description of it in Donald Shay's professional 
magazine. Kaleidoscope (available from Kr, Shay at 8 Wintergreen Ave,, KD #15, 
Newburgh, Iff, 12550). 

2. Frankly, I am baffled by Kr. White 8 3 complete lack of understanding if 
he cannot read a sentence, and ascertain its meaning. Recently, while attending 
a meeting of fellow sociologists in Los Angeles, I showed Kr. White's comments 
to one of our country's best sociologists. The reaction; did I'r. White attend 
high school, and take merely scimming courses, or has he gone on tc a university, 
where stupidity is not a virtme? Ky point is ostensible; a fannish fan was com 
plaining because Edward Wood's Journa l of Science Fiction was not of (he assumed) 
analogous quality as Quandry . and the; reasons the fan advanced were a bit ethno¬ 
centric. However, l/hit&s own justification for."people who sometimes emterrasing¬ 
ly live out their lives in naked, jsublic print" is a nonsensical statement of 
equally nonsensical philosophies. 1 have neither the time (being a research con¬ 
sultant) (and sociologist) nor the desire to show to Kr. ' r hite why hi3 arguments 
are false, re: the ideas of "being yourself," "letting go," etc, are quite prev¬ 
alent among fannish fanzines and ’White's bafflement is puzzling. As for their 
validity: need I remind. Kr. VWhite that social psychological research in the area 
of human development (of what deorge Kead has colled the "self") can easily show 
that those "fannish fans" who maudlinly endeavor to be "themselves" are merely 
justifying their own inadequacies? 

3. As for my "misrepresenting" Laney ' 1 '3 statements: I find Kr. .White either 
anti-intellectual, or, more likely, completely lacking 5_n the ability to think 
I have several magazines published by Laney in which he accused Ackerman of be¬ 
ing a homosexual, however, my analysis of Laney 1 's denegration of thoughts re 
mains the some; I have a complete set of Laney 9 s Fan - dango , as well as The Ac ¬ 
olyte . having performed a content analysis of Laney # s magazines, and charting 
these on schematic, statistical charts, one can easily demonstrate that Laney s 























siePHen piCKe-RinG 


spark of originality in a sea of ignorance was flickering, claminating in the 
demise of The Acolyte . As a Sociologist, I used my background in sketching the 
content of Laney c a magazines. Four areas were selected: 1. social class; 2. pol¬ 
itical ideology; 3. "justice" and similar themes; and 4. attitudes toward social 
structures within American society of the late 1940 a s. Since Laney often had 
strong leanings in a conservative direction, my hypotheses were formulated in 
such a manner that their substantiation would function as' a measure of conserv¬ 
atism. Ty conclusions were what I expected:all four areas were closely linked 
in Laney 9 s publications, reflecting Lney’s desires for a social order favoring 
his own rural thinking. Often, Laney 8 a ideas seem reflect;/ing of a middle-class 
mind frightened in a foreboding world wh'ch is incessantly threatened by domest¬ 
ic and foreign enemies. 

Should Hr. White not like my analysis, I suggest strongly that he take a few 
elementary courses in either sociology, or social psychology, and then come to 
me with his conclusions. I dislike people who have no disciplined training in the 
social sciences, to come to me and expostulate because my conclusions are based 
on functional analysis, and not upon whether the object in question was"freshened" 
with "fannish wit." 

4. The rest of : <fhite 8 s analysis, while well taken, is totally irrelevant. 

Since he knows neither who I am, nor that I am a social scientist, he merely hides 
behind ill-concealed delight in assuring himself that his type of trash is worth 
a second look. As a sociologist, I find his type of non-thinking columns neither 
useful, nor indicative about contemporary trends in "fandom." 

In short, I find l’r. ' bite 8 s rhetorical reiterations of alleged antinomies 
unfathomable. He has not shown that I, as a sociologist, have misrepresented 
"fannish fans." To the contrary, his many discussions arid columns show him to 
be ill-informed and misinformed on not only the content of fandom’s modes of 
thought, but also on life in general. 

Stephen 3 Pickering:.Research Consultant/Teacher’s assistant, department of Soc¬ 
iology, Bakersfield College, Bakersfield, California. 


39 






Oo In his unnumbered, introductory paragraph, Pickering finds my previous 
"criticism" of his work "banal": "neither valid, nor completely relevant 
to my premises as a social scientist," iiOto completely irrelevant either, I 
trust, I.y criticisms were that his facts were either wrong or not relevant to 
the points he was making, that Ms arguments were badly constructed, sud that 
he couldn't write. 

However, and more important, Pickering say3 "Ms treatment of the subject 
of 'fannish* fans, etc., all (sic) involve dichotomies (sic) that he makes 
sharper than what they are in actuality, and force upon us choices which we can 1 t 
make," Healso refers to my "self-constructed dilemas." Reference to dickering 3 s 
article in AIGOL //II, however, will clear up the problem of who drew which 
dichotomies and 'self-constructed dilemas.* 

1. Quite true; Mckering sent me a story and a letter. The story was a submission 
to KIWAC, the fanzine I published at that time. In the letter Pickering 

lectured me about VOK and what a swell fanzine it was, and how he intended to 
revive it. I note that he is now finishing an issue "after two years of research," 
with "the same purpose of reflecting the most perceptive material obtainable in 
that subculture known as ’fandom'." VOK was a letterzine. I wonder what Pickering*s 
version could possibly be. 

However, after receiving this letter from Mckering, in which he said, in 
1964, that he was revivinig VOK, I received at K&SF (although admittedly not 
addressed to me, Ted hite) another story, equally bad, and a long letter accomp¬ 
anying it which lectured me (F&SF) about Kay Bradbury's humble beginnings, and 
my/our duty to fledgling stf writers like Mckering, who was, he claimed, destined 
to be a major star some--day, perhaps another Bradbury. I returned the story with 
a personal note to the effect that his cov ring letter only made his story sound 
worse than it was, and that it was insulting to brag himself up over such a bad 
piece of fiction. 

Later I heard,neither directly or indirectly, that Mckering was now planning 
the revival of RHODOEAGNETIC DIGEST, apparently unaware of its 1962 revival., 

2. Okay, let’s run it through once more. The original quote, in all its beauty; 
"Several years ago, in a now-forgotten fanzine, a faanish fen deplored the 

fact that Edward './ood's csasterfuUy edited JOURNAL OF SCIENCE FICTION should have 
been like QUANDRY; QUANDRY, the pompous individual smugly announced, was 

the greatest contribution to fandom since FANTASY COMMENTATOR." Parse that one, 
fellows, Ky comment last issue was; "It is meaningless; Pick ring obviously did 
not mean that the fan in question 'deplored' any resemblance between '/ood's JOURNAL 
and QUANDRY." Chipping all the bull about "one of our country's best sociologists," 
and his supposed opinion of my education, Pickering says that what he meant was: 

"Ky point is ostensible; a fannish fan was complaining because Edward .'ood's 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE FICTION was not of (he assumed) analogous quality as (sic) 
QUANDRY, and the reasons the fan advanced were a bit ethnocentric." 

I like to set these things right down, side by side, where an easy comparison 
is possible. 

3-. "I find Kr. .bite either anti-intellectual, or, more likely, completely lack¬ 
ing in the ability to think ," *Sigh* I pointed out that Mckering, in casting 
F.T. Laney circa 1943 as a fannish fan vs, Forry Ackeman as a sercon was creating, 

40 


for the point of his argument, a complete role reversal. (Pickering also charged 
that Laney, in 1943 "and in this period" called Ackerman a homosexual, and that 
Bradbury and waugherty in refuting him were responsible for the death of Laney's 
ACCOLYTE. This is a chronology and a sequence of causes and effects which 

must have evn Forry laughing.) I went on to add that Pickering's "claim that 
Haney 'spoke with no thought as to what he was trying to say, 5 proves only that 
he never read any of Laney's incisive articles. Laney's writing on any topic 
would furnish Pickering an excellent model for his own sad attenr ts to express 
himself." 


bo Pickering rises to rebuttal. He calls me an anti-intellectual. *Sigh* 

ko This one is a dilly. Here Fickering pulls out all the stops. He refers to my 

"type of trash," my "type of non-thinking columns," and decides that I am 
"Ill-informed and misinformed on not only the content of fandom's often ethno¬ 
centric modes of thought, but also on life in eneral." He also refers to him¬ 
self as "a social scientist" once, and "as a sociologist" twice. 

Stephen E. Pickering is a teenaged college freshman, whose age makes his 
sophomoricisms understandable, and perhaps forgivable. But it does not, however, 
excuse h.i3 snobbish pedantry, nor his presumptions chicanery. I resent being 
patronized by 8 teenaged know-nothing who has presumed for himself status and 
titles to which he is not entitles. His exposure to college life has obviously 
led him only to the convolutions of the pedants at the outer fringes, to the 
glamor of the "five-buck word" and obfuscatory phraseology desired to impress 
the even more ignorant. He has neither learned to reason nor to communicate his 
thoughts cogently. His arguments are almost exclusively ad ho mlnem . and he 

sidesteps as "well-taken," but "totally irrelevant" (!) every valid point brought 
to bear against him. 


You have to admit, we don't get a Stephen E. Pickering or stage in fandom 
every day! 


— Ted White, 1966 


POSTSCRIPT: After writing the foregoing column, I received a phcnacall from 

Stephen E. Pickering, before receiving a copy of his latest eff¬ 
usion, I had heard about it from Andy Porter, and had written Fickering a letter. 
In It, I had more or less called him down for several of the remarks he'd made 
about me, remarks I considered highly uncalled for, and let him know that I knew 
his little secret and throwing his weight around was not going to impress me. 


So Stephen E. Pickering called me on the telephone. I have an unlisted num¬ 
ber, and it developed he'd called Andy first. 

"I'in very sorry you were upset by my letter," he said. (The piecejp which I 
have before me, is not a letter. It Is an article, headed "REPLY TO TED WHITE," 
and was accompanied by a covering letter vfhich began, "Enclosed please find a 
reply to fed White's recent attack against (sic) my article...") 

"Actually," he continued, "that article was an old article. It was three 
years old. It doesn't represent my views or anything today. It was tripe, act¬ 
ually." 

"That's funny," I said. "It read just like your recent reply." 

"Oh. Well, I was a little angry about your reply." 

I didn't reply to that. If his previous article no longer represented his 

41 



views, I wondered why he'd defended it so staunchly, lat I pressed on. J r-onti.on'ed 

that I didn't exactly care for his references to me in his recent piece. 

“Oh, but I have the highest respect for you as ait editor, i’r. ’bite," he 
said obsequeously. (out. ha called my fan writing '’trash' 1 .) 

He wont on to tell me that a:l the articles currently appearing iu fan?.'nos 
by him were three years old, and that he'd matured a lot since then. "I wta e‘ 

L/VSKS meeting and I was talking to fed Johnstone," he told mo, "and he said he 
thought I was a lot more mature." I wondered if Ted had seen Stpehen's recent 
stuff, but instead asked, 

"If your article in ALGOL was 30 old, whan did you submit it?" 

"Oh, three, four months ago. But that was through the N3F Manuscript Bureau. 
That's why all my old stuff is coming out." 

"Well," I said kindly, "if that's the case, nnd you no longer hold those 
views — * views which have earned you a pretty bad reputation in fandom, I hear 
— you'd best publish a statement to that effect, refuting then*." 

"Oh, yes, I will. I’ve changed a great deal. That 3tuff was all terrible 
stuff, terrible..." 

He apologized for taking ray time, and hung up. Then I called Andy Porter., I 
asked Andy if he’d gotten the article in question from the N3F J-'ss. Bureau . 

"thy nc, Ted," Andy' said. "Pickering sent it directly to me." 

"That's interesting," I said. 

— Ted 'white 

KDITQRIAL POSTSCRIPT: 

I have talked to 'ike Viggiano, head of the IJ3P Mss. Bureau, who lives in Brooklyn. 
He gives permission to quote him: "I never sent any Pickering material to ALGOL or 
to any fanzine in iiew York." He also mentioned that he had only received and sent 
out about 5 Pickering articles; therefore it is safe to assume that the rest were 
sent out to fanzines by the author, directly. A further note by Pickering to him 
(he was in correspondence with Pickering) disclosed that Pickering thought Ted ’-/hite 
was not really an editor. That's what I cell Heal Interesting Information. —AP. 



LUPOff'S 

BOOK 

UUPPB 


DICK 

LUPOFF 


PLUTQHIA An Adventure Through Prehistory by V., A, Obruchev, 1924, published in 
Russian, translated to English by Brian Fearce, published 1957 by Law¬ 
rence & V/ishart, 319 pageso 

This is still another Pelludidar stoz’y, which I suggested in ERBsKoA might have 
been inspired by Verne or Burroughs or Roy Rockwood. At the time I had not actually 
read the book (although I had looked at a copy), and I now discover to my embarr- 
asment that it contains an author’s forward in which he states (a) that he wrote 
it in 1915* and (b) that it was inspired by Verne’s Journey To The Center Of The 
Earth and Doyle’s The Lost '.'orId . (Obruchev, by the way, praises Verne but denigrates 
Doyle). 

So much for sources. The book itself contains & description of a rather convention¬ 
al Synnie 1 s Hole at the north pole, through which a Russian scientific expedition 
sails in 1914. They encounter the usual primitive life within the earth where, 
warmed by an inner sun, there survive primitive mammals, pterodactyls, dinosaurs, 
cave men, etc. Obruchev’s explorers, a dull and undifferentiated lot, wander around 
fafafifafififi Plutonia, chip away at geological formations, slaughter the 
local animals, exterminate some giant ants, capture a cave woman who thinks they 
are gods because of their rifles, and finally make it back to the outer world in 
time to have their yacht seized by the Austoo-Kungarian navy because World Far One 
lias broken out while they were "inside." 

Its a very dull book (although far from the worst of its kind). Probably not worth 
the trouble of reading unless you’re some kind cf Hollovz Earth Completist, 

+ + + *F + + + + + + + 

BORN IN A BOOKSHOP by Vincent, Starrett, University of Oklahoma 1965 , 309 pages. 

One of my favorite pastimes when Pat and I lived in New York (and one which I resume 
whenever I can on visits to The City) was to hang around the used book stores that 
still cluster along Fourth Avenue and the. adjacent thorough fares between Cooper 
Square and Fourteenth Street. And my favorite of all these stores, not only because 
the humorously dubbed "editorial offices" of Canaveral Press are on the same premises, 
i3 Biblo & Tannen’s at 63 Fourth Avenue. 

One pleasant Saturday a couple of years ago I was startled to hear a customer in- 

43 









quire as to the location of the Literature section, and after he was directed to 
it and had maue his way there I asked one of the proprietors what Literature was, 
if it wasn't the entire contents of the store. 

Thus I was illuminated to the existence of a whole category of writing, books 
about books, criticism, bibliography, essays about books and authors and the like. 

It was a beautiful discovery and literature sections have become one of my favor¬ 
ite parts of bookstores since. 

The current book is fobbed off as the autobiography of Vinvent Starrett, now in 
his eightieth year and a novelist, short story writer, poet, critic. Irregular, 
collector, and all-around bookman. It is, I suppose, an autobiography, in the 
sense that it gives the usual vital statistics and is written in the* first person, 
but it is really a book by and for booklovers. It is a long rambling essay on the 
books and authors Starrett has read and met and written in a long literary life. 

To start naming the bookmen whom Starrett has known and describes would be silly 
because the result would be a mere list of manes too long to include here, but in 
view of my well-known interest in the principal of one Starrett anecdote, I must 
direct any interested reader to Starrett » s description of the last time he saw 
Edgar Rice Burroughs, in the uniform of a militia captain, leading a parade con¬ 
sisting of twe scrawny militiamen staggering under the weight of their rifles, 
and four proud boy scouts, down the middle of a Chicago boulevard in celebration 
of the end of the first World War. 

Born In A Bookshop is a delight from beginning to end, but it is a book for book- 
lovers and others need not apply, 

+++++++++++ 

KIPLING AMD THE CHILDREN by Reger Lancelyn Green, Elek, II 965 , 240 Pages, 

Among is hther acheivements Green is an authority on Kipling, a leading light of 
the Kipling Society and past editor of its journal, and is slated to edit Kipling®s 
side of the Kipling-Haggard correspondence for publication. (Norton H. Cohen, Fro- 
fessor of English at City College and author of Rider Haggard . is handling Haggard s 
portion.) 

Published in the centenary year of Kipling c s birth, Kipling and the Children is a 
good biography of Kipling, and serves Incidentally as a clef to the roman of Kip= 
l±ng‘s autobiography. Something Of Kyself . an otherwise puzzling and unsatisfying 
work. 

As a guide to the works of Kipling Green is less satisfactory, although far from 
without value. Kipling and The Children is essentially biographical, not critical, 
and what literary guidance to Kipling that appears does so more or less incident¬ 
ally to the main purpose of the book. The title, by the way, should not be construed 
at all as meaning that Greenes book is intended for children. I doubt that a child 
would find the book very comprehensible, and certainly not very interesting, 

Green's title referrs to Kipling's relations with childrens with his younger sis¬ 
ter, especially when Kipling himself was a child; with his daughter who died in c 
childhood and with his son who was ’rilled in the first World War. Kipling And The 
Children offers considerable insight and great sympathy for Kipling," As his polit¬ 
ical. ideas, whether wight or wrong, become irrelevant in the post-imperialist world, 
his literary w rth will become more clearly tmderstood. 

44 









/A lagniappe to Burroughs fans, of whom Green is one, is his discussion, in this 
book, of the relative natures of Mowgli and Tar scan, and of the jungles and laws 
of the two. Highly perceptive, incisive, and not entirely to the benefit of the 
latter/. 

+ H-4- + + + + + + + + 

SOHETHING OF MYSELF for my Friends Known and Unknown , by Rudyard Kipling, Macmill¬ 
an 1937, 237 pages. 

This autobiography was incomplete at the time of Kipling's death, and possibly 
as arresult is a puzzling and unsatisfying one, badly in need of exegesis such 
as that provided in Kipling And The Children . With such a guide, however, it be¬ 
comes a poignant work; the melancholy of much of Kipling's life wa3 unknown to 
me until reading these books. 

Born in India, he was returned to England as a small child for his education, a 
common custom among Anglo-Indians at the time. Unknown to his parents, he fell 
into the hands of a cruelly puritanical foster mother and her sadistic son, who 
badgered and tormented the child Rudyard unceasingly. In time his only solace 
came to be book surreptitiously read in bed by insufficient light, to the point 
that Kipling became nearly blind! This incident, and many others, turn up in 
his fiction, much of which is autobiographical (another fact new to me), 

A towering figure in modern literature, Kipling deserves the study of any reader 
interested in the sources of modern fiction. To the science-fantasy fan and the 
ERB fan in particular, an understanding of Kipling along with other Victorians 
such as Haggard and Arnold is vital to a true understanding of the works of 
Burroughs. 

+++++++++++ 

THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK by Rudyard Kipling. 

THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHA’,’ AND OTHER GHOST STORIES by Rudyard Kipling. 

WEE WILLIE WINKLE by Rudyard Kipling. 

These three books of short stories by Kipling all date from fairly early in his 
career, and share the common background of British India, a world, as Dave Van 
Arnam would say, as alien to i960 America as anything in the pages of science fic¬ 
tion. 

Whether writing animal stories, tales of Indian life or of the British Raj, Kip¬ 
ling is at all times the master of his pen. Each word has its purpose, the charac¬ 
ters live and breathe, and If the sentiments seem somewhat dated, this proves them 
all the more in tune with those now departed times. 

A word to source hunters: The Elephants' Dance in Kipling's"Tcomai of the Elephants" 
( The Second Jungle Book) is the obvious inspiration of Burroughs 8 apish Dum-Dum,To 
reverse the current for a moment, Greer, avers that Kipling derived "BThe Finest 8. 
Story In The World"' ( The Phantom 'Rickshaw And Oth er Ghost Stories ) from Edwin 
Lester Arnold's fhra The Phoenician , That, of course, makes John Carter the cousin, 
through Fhra, of Kipling's Charlie Fears. 

Captain Carter, Mr. hears, Mr. hears. Captain Carter. 

+++++++++++ 

VIE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN by E. Hornung, Scribner's 1902, 244 pages, 

The memorable Stingaree notwithstanding, Hornung is chiefly esteemed (by those who 

45 















remember him at all) for his gentleman jewel-theif A. J. Raffles. The adventures 
of riaffles were recounted in a series of books beginning v/ith The Amateur C racks¬ 
man . as recorded by Raffles 5 assistant, cat's-paw and chronicler Bunny. 

The relationship between Raffles arid Bunny closely resembles that of Holmes and 
Ratson, and although the teams are on the side of the law opposite each 

other, considerable similarities exist (in part attributable, perhaps, to the 
fact that Komung and Doyle were rather chummy brothers-in-law). 

Raffles was a sometimes professional erinketeer who supported himself most of the 
time by high-class robberies. Bunny, an old school pal of RaffJ.es*, lived also on 
his share of their mutual spoils ., And of course there was the Scot Land Yardbird, 
Inspector Mackenzie, ever on the trail of the pair. 

The eight exploits in this first Raffles are all possessed of a rnarvelops elan; the 
thrills of the scrapes which Raffias and Runny get into and out of are nicely leav¬ 
ened with a delightful literateness seldom found (at least in my limited reading) 
in crire stories, as it is even more scarce in westerns, to which forming's Sting - 


aree belongs. 


I wonder if I could find a publisher for E. W, HORNUNG: MASTER OF INTRIGUE, I 
guess not, 

+++++++++++ 

MRS , RAFFLES By John Kendrick Bangs, Harpers 1?05, 180 pages. 

I haven't read the later Raffles books, but judging from the present volume Horn- 
ung must first have married off, then killed off his gentleman Jewel-thief. Mrs , 
Raffles ("being The Adventures of An Amateur Crackswoman") assume 3 a widowed Mrs. 

A. J, Raffles living in America and, assisted by an ever-faithful Bunny, taking 
on the bluebloods of Newport summer society with Jewel-theft and swindle. 

Bangs v s pseudo-Hornu.ngj.an cases are longer on laughs and shorter on thrills than 
the real thing, but they are ingenious and enjoyable, and the book is definitely 
worth-while as an adjunct to the doings of Baffles himself. 

+++++++++++ 

R. HOLMES AND CO. by John Hendrick Bangs, Harpers 1906 e 231 page 3 . 

Bangs was not only an admirer of Hornungc® but of Komungs 5 more famous brother- 
in-law, The hero of JK3's Pursuit cf tie h ouseboat , for instance, is the ghost of 
Sherlock Holmes. 

ft. Holmes & Co , (Being the remarkable Adventures of Raffles Holmes, Lac., Detective 
and Amateur Cracksman by Birth) assumes that the great S. erlock did marry — none 
other than A..J. Raffles’ lovely daughter — the fruit of this remarkable union 
being the hero of the present book. Raffles Holmes's Watson/Bunny is Jenkins, an 
impecunious New York author selected by the cracksman detective tc chronicle his 
exploits. 

The ten adventures in the book are only a partial success; neither Doyle nor Horn- 
ung nor, by the nature of pastiche, really Bangs purely, they have their points of 
interest and entertainment, but are, in the last analysis, of greater interest to 
the scholar than for entertainment value. 


+++++++++++ 



r 








THE GENIAL IDIOT by John Kendrick Bangs, Harpers 1008, 215 pages, 


Another of-Bangs 8 pleasant visits vdth the Idiot and the rest of the genial board¬ 
ers at Hrs„ Pedagog ; s boarding house for gentlemen. The Genial Idiot is not the k 
best book in the series but it does contain the best single episode of the series, 
"He Suggests A Comic Opera," 


In this romp the Idiot, the Lawyer, the Bibliomaniac, and the Poet compose a com¬ 
plete Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, "The Isle of Piccolo," featuring this ditty: 


I m a pirate bold 
ith a heart so cold 

That it turns the biggest joys to solemn sorrow; 
And the hero-ine, 
ith her eyes so fine. 



cation: 


I am going to—marry—to-morrow. 


(CHORUS) 

He is go»ing to-marry-~to~morrow 
The maid vdth a heart full of sorrow; 
For her we are sorry 
For she weds to-morry— 

She is going to~marry—to-morrow. 


And so on about 

the heroine Drivelina, the American naval Lieutenant 
Somebody or Other who is the hero, the sailors who 
sing: 

Ve are jackies, jackies, jackies. 

And we smoke the best tobaccys 

You can find from Zanzibar to Honeyloo...„ 

Oh, it's a lovely piece; at his best Bangs was a lov¬ 
ely writer. Jack Biblo keeps predicting a JKB come¬ 
back, and if it comes, here I"11 be, five years too 
early as usual. 

++++++ 

THE BREAKERS - -A CLUB, by John Kendrick 3angs, Harpers 
1899, 2A9 pages. 

Another mass spoof. The Dreamers chronicles the pro¬ 
ceedings of an imaginary literary club, and its top¬ 
icality can best be indicated by refloating its dedi- 


with all due respect and proper apologies to 

Richard Harding Davis, James hitcomb Riley, William Dean Powells, 
xiudyard Kipling, Hall Caine, Sundry Magazine Poets, Anthony Hope, 
the War Correspondents, A , Conan Doyle, Ian Kaclaren, James M. 
Barrie, The Involvular Club, and Mr. Dooley,, 


Except perhaps for the final 
entry, ones enjoyment of this book will very directly with one # s appreciation of 
the works of the authors cited in the dedication; this leaves me pretty far out 


47 








in the cold, but as Terry Carr says of the works of P. D, Q„ Be- ck, it takes an ed¬ 
ucated audience to appreciate the inside lines. 

+ 4 - 4 - 4 -+ + + ++ + + 

COBWEBS FROL A LITERARY CORNER by John Kendrick Bangs, Harpers 1899, 101 pages. 

The actual title of the book is Cobwebs From A Library Comer . but it was mistitled 
in the typing by one Andrew Torter, who I fear grows tired of seeing reviews by 
authors long dead. 


A tiny book of poetry — the pages are about 6 by 3 inches, and the type is not 
very tight — this contains a good many worthwhile stanzas. 

I said poetry; light verse is really a more appropriate 
term. For example: 

The poet pens his odes and sonnets spruce 
With quills plucked from the ordinary goose. 

While critics write their sharp incisive lines 
With quills snatched from the fretful porcupines. 

There are a couple of serious sentiments too, 
but for the most part that's the tone of the book. 

++++++ 

THE WORSTED HAN by John Kendrick Bangs, Harpers 
1905, 86 pages. 

This "Husical Play for Amateurs" takes place at 
a sort of earlier-day Grossingers, where a group 
of frustrated working-girle manufacture a sort 
of male Miss America Doll (a nickel for the 
first ID of that one!) and endow it with mag 
ical life. About the only noteworthy character 
in the play is the heroine. Impatience. The 
songs are set to G & S tunes, mostly from — 
right! — "Tatience." 

++++++ 

TILE WATER GHOST AND OTH ERS by John Kendrick 
Bangs, Rarpers 
1894* 296 pages.. 

This book contains 8 ghost stories, 7 of them 
humorous including "The Water Ghost of Harro^by 
Hall," of which Fred Patten and Haggle Thompson are 


and it is a fine Bangs fantasy book, one of his best 



Ky personal favorite is "A I sy chi cal Frank," really more of an astral projection- 
psi ty e thing than a real ghost story, involving the Boston Theosophy Center, and 
a beautifully worked-out thing it Is! The one serious story in the book, "The Lit¬ 
erary Remains of Thomas Pragdon," is ;in unusual and touching sort of ghost story, 
one, as they say, better read than described. But then that’s true of practically 
anything worth reading at all. 

+ + + + + + + + + + + 

BIKEY THE SKICYCLE and other tales of Jicimle boy by John Kendrick Bangs, Riggs, 1902, 
321 pages. 


48 













A juvenile book (of all the Bangs I’ve read to date, there have only been two 
such) composed oi' a dozen dream adventures, thin is only a partial success. The 
title story is one of JKB’s few interplanetaries (O lympian Mights is another)j 
Jimmieboy and an intelligent bicycle o to Jupiter, with amusing and sometimes 
stfish results.. 


The best story in the book is the final one, "The Stupid Little Apple Tree," a 
perhaps over-sentimentalized fable about (of course, of course!) life and death. 
Over sentimentalized or not, I found it quite touching and perhaps even ro found, 
something that Bangs almost never ’was, 

+++++++++++ 

TREASURE ISLAND by Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883; 1965 edition, :r hitman , 254 pages, 

M'ithin the memory of living man there was a time when Dick Lupoff had not read a 
single book by Doc Smith, nor Edgar Rice Burroughs, nor Rudyard Kipling, nor L. 
Frank Baum, nor H. Rider Haggard, nor a good many more, Ray Bradbury I had read, 
and Robert A, heinlein, and Arthur C, Clarke, and Clifford 

D„ Simak.. I had read Arthur Conan Doyle 8 sThe Lost World but never a word, of Sher¬ 
lock Holmes. Of Stevenson, I had read Dr. Jeckyl and The New Arabian Nights (the 
former is stf, of a sort, the latter fantasy) but never his famous Treasur e Island . 

Why the strange lacunae? Partly because I was a dedicated reader of Modern Adult 
Science Fiction (a magazine of the time), partly, I suppose, for the sake of one 
downamanship. In the past few years, twixt and tween the more obscure works of 
Mabel Fuller Bodgett, Fenton Ash, James Edison Northford, and Harry Prentice 
(and others of their unrecalled ilk) I have attempted to fill in some of the gaps 
by reading the books that "everybody" has read but that I hadn’t. 

T reasure Island is a leading candidate for the title of All-Time Best Boy’s Book, 
and it’s a pretty good simple adventure story for adult readers too, providing 
they don’t mind the boy’s book conventions of the adolescent hero e£ and asexual- 
ity of the book. Jim Hawkins is s pretty good boy hero. He is by turns brave (but 
not unbelievably so), frightened (but justifiably so), capable (but not unrealist¬ 
ically so), etc. 


The reman tic setting of Treasure Island is fully as appealling as Vincent Starrett 
says it is in Born In A Book Shop , the famous characters Blind Pew, Captain Flint, 
Squire Trelawny, Ben Gunn and the rest are all as good and as vivid as their re¬ 
putations claim...and if long John Silver isn’t the prototype of Blacky Duquesne 
then their similarity is one of the greatest coincidences of literary history., 
+++++++++++ 

THE TERROR by Arthur Kachen, McBride 1917, Norton edition 1965 with a new intro¬ 
duction by Vincent Starrettj 190 pages. 

This strange book (subtitles simply, "A Fantasy" but issued as the first volume 
in Norton’s new "Seagull Library of Mystery and Suspenc ") tells of a strange 
series of occurrences in rural England during IvorId Var I, Mysterious disappearan¬ 
ces, brutal and apparently senseless killings, "accidents" that challenge credul¬ 
ity yet admit of no patterned explanation...the whole hushed in wartime security 
and two men trying, in the face of official denials and opposition, to establish 
a pattern and find a meaning in the strangeness „ 

The Terror is a fascinating end frightening book, rendered thoroughly unsatisfact¬ 
ory by its own (perhaps necessary) episodic quality. The reader, like Kachen’s 

49 


f 










protagonists, strives helplessly to see meaning in the terrible, inexplicable 
event 3 of 19?, And the solution, tentatively reached by the ' dc ._stives” in the 
book, is neither convincing nor satisfying...although it too, is frightening and 
intriguing. The Terror is a strange, difficult and unsatisfactory book, certainly 
not for every reader* . .but as a v ery offbeat work bordering on science-fantasy, 
it rewards the requisite effort of its reading, 

+ + + + + ++ + + -T + 

THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE by E. U, Hornung, Scribner 1902, 1908; 377 pages, 

This is the first Hornung novel I’ve come across (both Stingaree and The A mateur 
Cracksman are books of interconnected short stories) and it is n treasure. All the 
paperback houses are going in heavily for the neo-Gothic mystery-suspense-romance 
terror books lately...here's one sixty-three years old but written with no element 
of the formula missing. Get this: 

Heroine accused of hor husband 5 s murder, her trial, the mysterious stranger, 
the heroine taken to an exotic villa in the country, the slow-dying foreign¬ 
er, a secret panel, an old portrait of the murdered husband, and so on and 
on. 

It is all, as Chris Steinbrunner would say, too beautiful. A book with 
more laughs I haven't read in a long, long time. Unreservedly recommended — for 
pure fun reading? (Somehow 1 do not fuel that E.Hornung would be pleased.) 
+++++++++++ 

FRINGE OF DARKNESS an anthology of ’..'itchcraft, Satanism, Sorcery and Lycanthropy 
edited by Gerald Verner; ilider 1946; 250 pages. 

This collection has a most interesting plan: each of the four related themes is 
treated alternately in non-fiction and fiction selections by Tontague Summers. 
Cotton lather, >argaret Irvin, Algernon Blackwood, John Buchan, Sax Rohmer, Dor¬ 
othy L„ Sayers, Saki, and F. G. Loring. 

The selections, unfortunately, seldom live up to their distinguished authors, .’on- 
tague Summers, that pompous old fraud, gets a bit too much by the third go-round 
(Verner naist have ;ot a copy of 'i'he Geography of h'itchcraft and cribbed for all he 
was worth). Cotton lather’s archaisms too are quoted far too long, and the aohmer, 
from his very rare The Romanc e of Sorcery is a major letdown. 

The Blackwood story, Ancient S orcerie s. is the best of the John Silence stories 
(although too wordy too)~and the Loring story. The Tomb of Sarah . is an excellent; 
albeit obvious, vampire tale. They are the best things in the book. 


—dick lupoff, 1966 












"F fll 

A NARRATIVE 
BY 


m fl n 

OF THE UNDERWORLD 


The steady chatter of the typewriter halted momentarily. "Gra~ace! ’/ould ycu 
please briny, me another beer?” the stocky, crew-cut man called out. 

"Just a minute, Bruce,” Grace called from the kitchen. "Pm pressing your 
spare costume." 

Presently Grace, a lithe blonde in her late teens, came in with an open 
quart bottle of beer. Bruce took it, and raised it to his lips As he began tc 
drink, lie noticed a strange sight through the upper panel of the window by his 
desk. A circle of light illuminated a cloudbank, and on the circle was Outlined 
a huge beer-bottle. 

"It s the Fatsignal!" he said,, "There * work for us tonight. Thrush!" 

For, though only three people knew the secret, mild mannered writer Bruce 
Van '.'hite is actually Fatman, caped crusader against crime on the subway. And 
his beautiful girl assistant, thrush, is actually Grace Dixon, who shares 

his apartment in the Bronx ("None of that ’’ward 8 crap," Fatman says. "We“re 3hack 
ed up.") for is the apartment house in which they live, what it seems to be. In 
Peter Stuyvecant’s time it was Kadath, the mansion of the Van Vfeit family in the 
thinly settled Bronx. Now it has been remodeled into an apartment house, and it’s 
secret is known only to the Dynamic Duo and to the house's Super, Old Alfred, who 
has been a faithful servant of the Van ’•••hite family since 1660. 









Fatman and Thrush hurried into their costumes and slid down the brass rails 
(salvaged from Tex Guinan's speakeasy when repeal forced that institution into 
liquidation) into the Fatcave. Here, far below the surface of the Bronx, Patman 
keeps all his equipment for his role —the spy eyes th t wander the subway tunnels, 
the lighted nap that shows at a glance the location of every subway train in New 
York City, and most important, the Fatcar, a private subway car by which Patman 
and Thrush can patro] the hundreds of miles of subway tracks. As they plummeted 
into the Fatcave, old Alfred stepped out of the Fatcar witha rag in his hand. 

"It 9 a all set to go," he told the Ca ed Crusaders. "I've just finished fixing 
it up from the time you disguised it as a New Lots express to catch Supermustache, 
who was pasting peace stickers on subway trains all over Brooklyn. I had to erase 
57 L.A.K.F.s from the walls." 

"Off on a new adventure, 11 Fattoian said, "Thrush, will you see that the beer 
chest is full, while I call the Transit Authority and find out what's up." 

Fatman picked up ti.e brown phone, which connected with a direct wire to the 
office of Transit Commisiouer 0‘Golducci. "Patman here," he said laconically., 

"Thank goodness you've called," OdGolducci replied, so agittated that he 
forgot his usual accent, "Patman, some fiend is trying to ruin the new East River 
Tunnel. Phoney blueprints are being given to the construction crew and the tunnel 
is going off in the wrong direction!" 

"Wrong direction! In what direction?" 

"Straight down!" 

Fatman slammed down the phone and leaped into the. motormanfis seat of the Bat- 
car. With one hand on the steering handle, a bottle of beer in the other, and 
Thrush on has lap, he drove the Fatcar out of the Fatcave, through a clever plastic 
facade, and onto the downtown tracks of the IND D-train. 

It was late at night, so in less than half an hour Fatman and Thrush reached 
the site of the East River Tunnel construction work. The place was deserted, except 
for a solitary watchman. 

"Watcha want?" the watchman yawned as the Fatcar ground to a halt. 

"We're hervi to investigate the misdirection of the tunnel," Fatman said, 

"Have you noticed anything suspicious around here?" 

"Naw. Won’t be anyone here until the work crew come3 on at nine. Damnloafers 
gotta union contract for a seven hour day. 'Twaren t like that in gran*pappy's day, 
I wouldn't be jest a nightwatchman, 'cept that he lost all his money when them 
bleedin* hearts innerferred with his business and put through that there law that 
made his workin 1, men so uppity." 

"'What lew," Thrush asked. "The Wagner Act?" 

"Naw, the Thirteenth Amendment, Gran'pappy was a slave dealer." 

"Look, Thrush!" Fatman called. "Here's a clue. A bottle cap!" 



; up again when the watchman tried 
sr seen a bottle cap like that before 

. ;■ i. v. t i implied, "It's from a bottle of 
: i> i.v :• -ucj eat Oriental brews with moderr 

atop is Chinatown," 


+ -+■ 


Patman a-.J Thrusg ::.rk~;d the car on a disused spur just off the Canal Street 
■ C"iiaatown* It was fast three- am, but a few Chinese res¬ 
ign.-ants were still open, catering to after-theatre crowds. The Dynamic Duo 
avoided these,, and headed to a dimly lit cellar on Doyers Street, A bearded Irish- 
; i apparently a door guard, was sprawltei in the doorway reading old comic books. 
Under their insidious spell he lay in a stupor, so the Duo stepped over him and 
into the dimly lit interior. A siekeningly sweet smoko hung over them, and they 
looked about at figures sprawled over couches. 

"Holy Rohmer» Patman," Thrush whispered, "I didn’ t know places like this 
still existed." 

"This, Thrush," the masked man told her, "is the headqaurters of the dread 
Si Pi Fan, a sinister organization dedicated to maiking people dream so much about 
the past and the future that they will ignore the Si Fi Fan as it takes over the 
present. Observe these poor wretches, who have sacrificed their brains to this 
mind destroying conspiracy." 

Thrush looked around the room, and saw that the minds of most of its inmates 
were indeed gone. In one corner a slim, bearded youth chanted an unceasing, "Never 
Never. Never." In another., a dissipated Southern Belle muttered, "First was 1952, 
then 1957, then 1 %2 By 1967 —never fear-- it will came agin!" A giganjdc 
black man mixed a vat-full of some unknown brew, A little girl, no more than nine 
years old, did horrible things to a rabbit, while a bearded man rolled on th® 
fiAor at the sight and whimpered "I remember Lerauria!" A blonde woman, 

naked save for two bandaids and a cork, chanted "They*re all immature. They”re 
all immature but me!" Another woman, a brunette, cams stealthily up behind her 
with a second cork, and the two pitched into a hair-pulling brawl. 

"These are just poor devils eh the outskirts of the conspiracy," Fatm&n 
whispered te. his young mistress. "The real master of this menage is in back." 

They deshed through the inner dcorway and into a room whose elegant decor contras¬ 
ted sharply with the squalor outside, There, a burly man in armor sat, twirling 
the hl.lt of a sword in his hands. 

"Why have you come to invade the sanctuary of Dr. Bea?" he snarled at Pat man . 

"Holy H.Fi" Thrush exclaimed. "Or. Dea lived four hundred years ago?" 

"True," said the burly man, "but he left a son, offspring of an unhallowed 
union between him and iigo Ran Ngo, daughter of the Vietnamese magician Ngo Dam 
dud The lineage of magicians that sprang from his loins culminates today in th® 
greatest mege of bast or -jest, Ur. Dee Kee Nee!"And new, for disturbing the sanc¬ 
tuary cf Dr, Dee Kee Nee, you die!" 



The bur. ;. ?:ua rose to his feet and raised his sword.. "Holy P atriarchs!" 
Thrush said. "Your sword i 3 out!" 

"Your eyesight is commendable," their fee said sardonically, "How could you 
think otherwise, when it is here ready to be cooled in your Vised?" 

"No - er - I mean - your sword is out!" Thrush blushed, and pointed, 

"Oops, sorry," The burly man dropped his sword and sipped up his codpiece, 
While he was thus occupied, Kalman and Thrush fled into the outer room. 

The dynamic Dua were just about tfc escape from the den of the Si Fi Pan 
when a malevolent, monstrously ugly figure came in the door and gripped one of t 
them in each hand. He then looked at the Burly Kan, as .if to ask what to do with 
the intruders, 

"Good bey, Gib-Gib," the Burly man said, "You fools, your doom is sealed, 
Bib -Gib is a monster created by the genius ©f Dr. Dee Kee Nee, who took the body 
of a man and put in it the brain of a cop, Gib-Gib, drop these meddlers down the 
chute. Leave them to the gentle mercies of the Omnifut!" 

At this dread name, the denizens of the Si Fi Fan hangout gasped, and even 
the horrendous Gib-Gib shuddered, "I wish you the joy of your acqaintance with 
the Omnifut," the Burly man went on. "He will not kill you; you will merely wish 
for death. Perhaps you are familiar with Shakespeare, Fatman. Then you may know 
what I mean when I say that 8 he cares not what mischief he does, if his weapon be 
out: he will foin like any devil; he will 3 pare neither man, wsrnan, nor child.” 

I wonder which of you he will take first. Farewell, Fatman and Thrush!" 

+++++++++++ 

Gib-Gib flung the Dynamic Duo down the chute, and they landed heavily on a 
mattress. P eking themselves up, they discovered that they were in a great under¬ 
ground vault, dark save for a little candle. 

They cautiously moved toward that light, 
prepared for almost anything but what they 
found. A shaggy gnome sat at a table, using 
the candle to examine carefully the gold coins 
that were spread before him, 

"Good evening, madam and sir," he greeted 
them. "Please excuse my not rising, but I am 
not in the best of health." 

"But - where is the Omnifut?" Fatman asked. 

"Oh, the terrible Omnifut?" the gnome laugh* 

He held up a tiny sliver of gold to the light. 

"Very interesting item, this. It's a 25 # gold 
piece." 

"Holy Keynes!" said Thrush."What was it 
used for?" 

54 



"The early gold-hunterg in California had no 

silver for small change, so they used these," the 
gnome replied,, 

"But the Qranifut Fatman said, 

"Oh, that? The Qranifut is supposed to be me," 
the gnome laughed, "Dee Kee Mae and his henchmen 
have been telling that story for so long that 
they"fee begun to believe it by now. I suppose 
you're looking for the way out of here. That door 
leads into the kitchen of the Chopsueyside House, 
on Pell Street," 

Fatman and Thrush left into the greying dawn. 
As they re-entered the Fatear. Thrush said, "So 
the sinister Dr. Dee Kee Nee is behind this. If 
we only knew where to find him." 

"There is only one place where ha cold poss¬ 
ibly be," Fatman replied. "Dr. Dee is leader of an 
underground group called the Yellow Muslims. They plan to take over the world, so 
that it may be ruled by the superior Mongol race. Dr. Dee lias a bitter contempt 
for all whites, and wishes to see them humiliated. Knowing this, I am sure there 
is only one place he could possibly live." 

"You mean 

"Yes. V/e will find Dr. Dee in Bronxville." 

+++++++++++ 

Despite the civil rights movement, the Metcalf-Baker Act, and several exposes 
in Commentary , Bronxville still glorifies in its distinction of being the only i± 
lily-white Christian town in the East. Thither Fatman and Thrush went in the Fat- 
car, via a spur line of the IRT which wt3 built in 1916 and abandoned in the foll¬ 
owing year when all the people who knew of ite existence went down in the Lusitan¬ 
ia , The line ended in the basement of the mansion occupied by the Nelson brothers, 
Ray, Seymour, and Derek. These throe elderly recluses b’.sied themselves with their 
eccentric hobbies, being scarcely seen on the streets of the town. Ray attempted 
to reach satori by inhaling the smoke of burning missals, Seymour was trying to 
invent a third magnetic pole, neither positive not negative, and Derek was com¬ 
posing a manifesto designed to save the world from the Christian-Communist-Hber- 
al conspiracy. 

The Dynamic Duo took two of Derek's extensive stable of motorcycles and rode 
directly to Dr. Dee's home. The headquarters of the Yellow Muslims was not diffi¬ 
cult to find; it was the only hone in Bronxville which had live dacoits instead of 
Negro-like plaster hitching posts by the driveways. Fatman and Thrush announced 
their entry by the usual method: by breaking open the windows with beer bottles, 
and clubbing Dr. Deo into‘‘Sensibility with the same weapons when he appeared to 
investigate the racket. ^ 

When Dr. Dee recovered, the Dynamic Duo had hir> tightly bound. "Your plot is 

55 





foiled. Dee Kee Lee," Fatman informed him. "’■'hat wag the idea of trying tv make 

the subway tunnel go straight down?" 

"I - love - subways," Dr. Dee gasped., "They are the one facet of western 
culture worth saving. But my own country Vietnam has no subways, I wanted to 
give her one. So I had the blueprints changed, so that the new tunnel would go 
straight through the earth, and come out in my native town of Quic Buc. You have 
foiled me, you round-eyed tillain!" 

+++++++++++ 


Back in their apartment, Bruce Van V'hite and Grace Dixon were discussing 
their adventure with Dr. Dee and the Si Fi Fan over a fresh quart of beer. 
"There's only one flaw in this latest adventure, Grace," the writer said. "This 
time we have no souvenir for our collectoin in the Fatcave." 

"well, there is one souvenir," his aide replied, "but it's nothing we c n 
put on a shelf." She raised her skirt to show Bruce the unmistakable mark of a 
pinch. "That Omnifut wasn't Quite so harmless as he said he was." 


— John Boardman, 5966 

/~A note from the editor: Those who read this with, the light of innocence in their 
eyes will read a funny story which requires a slight familiarity with New York 
to fully understand. The more weary among us, however, will recognize several 
well-known fans who have been heavily satirized. Let it be known that this story 
was originally intended for tha Cult, and withhold your comments to the author 
to those circles, if you will._7 



56 




























nem-ER Rfiin noR snouj 


The idea of an article on the gentle art of editing is neither new nor origin¬ 
al., Ted t.'hite has covered the subject rather well in his numerous articles on the 
slush pile at Fantasy a.id Science Fiction. However, fed is no longer in charge of 
the slush at J'&SF, and I, as the now management, havr. a few things to say. 

’.Then I first took over, I saw in the pile a chance to read mere science fic¬ 
tion than I'd ever seen before, and get paid for it at the sane time. Needless tc- 
say , before the first week was out I*d discovered what Sturgeon’s law really 
meant, because I was getting a thorough slice of the junk that passes for science 
fiction in tn« minus of people<, 

To those of you reading this, mostly fans, though there may be a few- reading 
this who've picked it ur at a convention, I've a few points to make. 

There is a definite limiting factor to what must constitute a good story. 

The points that I will try to make follow. 

1. The type of story which is a mere incident, with no beginning, middle, or 
end. but is simply .* happening with no direction in which to go is not a type of 
story that will be accepted by aay oditor. Yet this is the most common type of 
submission, and there '3 noimng than can do done uncut it, unless the editor wants 
to waste time by writing a note to the author, which usually nniy spurs that in¬ 
dividual on to new and worse masterpieces. 

2. The type of story in which there is action and some type of plotting, but 
in which the entire thing is told as a narration without character involvement is 
auoti er common type. This shows that the author simply can't handle people, which 
are the most important part, of any story, unless you're Olaf .Stapleton, in which 
case you can get around this. This inability to handle characterization is a ser- 


THE GENTLE ART OF EDITING 
BY 

59 







ioua handicap] without an interplay between the characters, there is little 
chance for the reader to become involved in the story, and less of a chance for 
the story to sell because of this. r van if the envolvemeni is between a man and 
a computer, there must still be some life, soma interplay to establish this 
mood of interplay. 

3. The third type is the story in which there is plot, there are characters 
onstage, and t‘ ere is dialogue. Unfortunately for the reader, the author has be ¬ 
come so envoived in las mastery of dialogue that that’s all tlvat ever haprenr: 
the characters sir; ply sit around and tell each other, in the most prolix lang¬ 
uage, exactly, what they're going to do when a situation comes up. It's like a 
fisherman sitting around and tellint others fishermen what he's going to do when 
he gets that ’ia..t fish on the line, he never gets to do it, he merely tells what 
is going to happen, 

4. The story in which there is action, dialogue, and character involvement, 
and in which the story moves right along has all the earmarks of a successful 
story. However, the writer has so carefully plotted out the story that he has 
over-piotted it. This is a fault which some writers never learn about, even th® 
the? are selling at the tiire they do this. If they learned what they were doing, 
the?- would be ab e to write better than they are doing, and correspondingly enter 
more markets. 

The trouble is simple: the characters move without any reason for their ac¬ 
tions. This cun be seen best in many of the later books of Andre Horton, who it 
aprears has litule feedback from other writers, except through the hazy channels 
of Miekas, a fanzine that has few other writers in its stable of contributing 
professionals. 

In Tcy Out Of Time . Mss Horton's characters construct a time machine under 
water, and are catapulted into the main course of the plot when a seaquake or a 
disturbance causes the machine to break down and precipitate Lhe characters into 
the story. The manipulation by the writer in this case is obvious: wh? did the 
Time ! achine have to be built underwater in the first place? If it were built 
on the land, then no disturbance of the 3ea could have affected it, and the story 
would never have happened. And thus Mss Horton would never have received her 
check for Cl500 from Ace Books. 

Ted White plots out bis books, writes a cample chapter, sells the book, and 
then writes the remainder. This formula has worked for him to the tune of 3 pub 
listed books and another half cionen more which have been sol.; -and are current ¬ 
ly being written, because of the formula fed uses, I find the character involve, 
meat in some ways inadequate. The characters are involved because they've been 
pushed into situations by others, and not by their own creation of the circum¬ 
stances. They are being manipulated by the author; this is quite clear in Android 
nvenger , where the hero is set into several situations because he is, fundament¬ 
ally, an android, and under the control of another. He is reacting to the twists 
of the plot, and never creates a situation of his own choosing until much of the 
book is past. In Phoenix Prime , the here, Eax Guest, isSet into another 
world b\ the maneuverings of The Others, who steer him from one scene to the next 
all through the beginning of the book, 

I find the type of plotting used by writers like Lee Hoffman to be better in 
many ways. Hor one, when I asked Lee what was happening in one cf her novels-in- 

6o 





progress, she said, "dee, I don’t kncwj I just killed my main character off, and 
I don’t know what's going to happen next!" Weedless to say, something must 
have happened „ because Lee just sold that novel, a Western, to Lallan tine Books, 

I like that type of plotting in a novel or short story a great deal move than 
what led uses.. I admit his system works, and it works pretty well, but I think 
that the type of plotting that Lee and other writers use works better in most 
cases, 

5. The last category really has two endings. There is one in which the story 
has all the ingredients needed to sell, u til you reach the ending. The ending in 
one type is usually either a rapid summation of events and loose ends that could 
better hate been taken care of in the body of the story, or else is an ending in 
itslef, a summation by one character to another of what the story was about . This 
type of ending has been used with success only by Arthur Conan Boyle in his Sher¬ 
lock holmes books, and even then he used this summation to tie up loose ends 
that had been mere hints in the story. Few other authors have been as successful 
as he at this sort of thing. 

..'here slush pile authors (if I may coin a term) have a character 3t®p ing in 
from stage right and explaining away the ending, using this as a device, the story 
becoms ineffective. If the author has to sub it to this device, what is the point 
of developing the story? 

The other type of ending is the punchline effext, so called because the en¬ 
tire purpose of the story is aimed at creating a shocking line or two at the end 
of the story. This is varied by some, who attempt sly humor or a miserable pun 
in place of a proper ending. 

dither way, it’s not an effective conclusion for a story, and certainly not 
worth the effort of plowing through the rest of the manuscript. 


+++++++++++ 


These then arc the general types of stories that I read the most freouently. 
Out of nearly three hundred stories, only one will be published. This is what the 
beginning author is up against, and this is why he must meet all these hurdles I 

here wriiten about, if he wants to see his name in print. 

This isn't tc say that it’s completely impossible to -et a submitted story- 
accepted and published 5 after all, even though there are 2CO jr.3S. with one pub¬ 
lishable story in the entire bunch, I read better than 100 per week, so there 
is a fair chance. 

There arc, of course, a number of Editorial Taboos. These are things which 
just aren't done. 

The first type is among the mechanical. If your story is addressed to the 
editor in crayon or jencil, naturally he isn't going to be impressed by you. 

You musjt impress on the editor that you are a ’.eat Type who knows the In's of 

dealing with the Fcitorial kind. The appearance of the manuscript has a great 

deal to do with whether the story will be accepted or r jected. "his is one of 
the great problems that uorr.an Kagan had; on the whole, his mss. are messy, 
rid en with typocs, and generally completely ungrammatical. I would imagine 



. 

you're ith It. . iKovis ; a giant m c. -or. • 1 iriuo a i f, uy en vr-lci.* is no y to 

sec, or unfold anJ road, ’.'ho best v y tr send a manust ”3t Soto * : •>;*•J ,* • .-i 

a large size envelop with the earns si?..- envelop*? e . lossd inscdc, tli .•••■ 1 

postage already panned on (you’d be surprizes hew many authors dr Ft bofche.” 

include a tiJ 1.. or postage with their story.). 

Now that the mechanical details art past, plea?e bo hot /rite /. hto. y 't. 

a) A Deal with the /’evil, fe) Flying Saucers, nor c) the I'ero ..-..tualiy '' tig 
Ads» :in a clever plastic disguise,. . 

These are subjects which most science fiction /mgaaines have no interest in, 
Fantasy and Science Fiction among them, because they are themes which have he»a 
done into the ground, and it’s very doubtful whether you'll have anything new t» 
eay in these territories* 

Head and compare stories; if you think yours can cor are with what's current¬ 
ly being published, then by all nenas submit it to a magazine, ict necessarily 
F&SF: there's IF for pulp-type action. Analog for science-fiction (and for C.-mp- 
bell fiction, too), an,; all the rest of the magazines„ 

This article has covered a lot of ground. Needless to say, Poetry is an ent¬ 
irely different matter than the Short Story, so I've not covered it here. 

In conclusion: appear:nee counts, so submit a neat manuscript; 1 5 11 assume 
most of you are familiar with the mechanics ©f subediting. A good b ok to study 
for beginning writers Is Element s of Style by Strunk and b/hitej it's.available 
in tsper fre® i.aclillan for 95$, and gives invaluable rules on good usage in 


writing. 


Avoid overstepping editorial policy in the ways I mentioned abo The 
rest will be up to the editor; don't assume he doesn't knew something about 
writing that you do. Keep submitting, even if you don't receive a personal arc,: 
from the editor, .and who knows? Fcrhaps one day you til grow up to be H 


—Andrew :orier , 1966 









nr 



















Harry Warner, Jr./423 Summit Avenue/llager stown, Karyland, 21740 

Thi3 may or may not be the .longest or the most favorable letter or comment 

on the 11th Algol. But it must be the latest. 

Ted White continues to amaze me beyond the power of words to express. It’s easy 
to imagine someone enduring all the slings and arrows of outraged Newport police¬ 
men for the sake of hearing the jazz he loves, but his willingness to put up 
cheerfully with these troubles at a folk music festival where ho doesn't expect 
to find s.3 much pleasure—! Someday, Ted will be recognized as the modern Thoreau. 

The most interesting part in the Lupoff column tills time was his resurrection 
of the non-fiction herritt item. There can't be many readers of Algol old enough 
to remember what The American Weekly was like when I'erritt was editing it. The 
best thing in it was the occasional big front pa ;e spread on some speculative 
science item, with a full color illustration sprawling across half the front page. 
I was too young even to look for the name of the artist when this sort of thing 
was in its prime but the blindingly colored pictures and the vivid text about 
how man would colonize the moon or some similiarly fantastic topic tied in nice¬ 
ly with the prozines that were then new to me. I've never even heard of the ardent 
1'erritt collectors possessing copies of the fantasy-slanted things in the Sunday 
supplement, and I imagaine that they would be unobtainable today for all intents 
arid purposes, except via microfilm copies. 

Banks kebane was interesting on a topic that reveals one of my mental blind spots. 
Any of the hobbies connected with automobiles—-collecting old ones, racing expen¬ 
sive new one 3 , rehabilitating worn-out ones—leave me completely indifferent. Al¬ 
most any other popular hobby that I encounter sparks mild interest in me and the 
strong suspicion that I'd better get away from here fast or I’ll find myself en¬ 
gaged in another time-waster. But something, maybe the fact that I grew up in a 
fajuily that didn't own a car, prevents me from showing interest in motor vehicles 

63 






for anythin ; other than utilitarian purposes. 

Bob Tucker might bo right about fishing for telepaths. But I can cite one major 
difference between the situation today and that just before the first atomic 
bombs. Then, the newspapers got secret Instructions wld ay in Torld ,'ar II from 
important poeple in i/ashinrton, warning about the necessity of not publishing 
anything at all concerned with potential energy or military use of the atom, 
radioactivity, and related topics, no such instructions have -cue out in recent 
years involving the telepaths or any other topic, for that matter. Of course, 
this could be the result of the absence of an official state of war today 

and the difficulty of enforcing sensorship. 

I’m starting to get 'tired of Stephen Pickering’s efforts to build riissention 
and to create dividing lanes between sercon fans and funnish fans. It’s bad enuf 
that we must try to wipe out racial prejudice based on obvious and existing diff¬ 
erences in skin colors; it’s idiotic to risk the formation of a prejudice based 
on non -existent differences differences, because there are really no fans who r.rt 
ali-sercon and nano who are all-fannish. I respect Ted V/hite for his efforts to. 
make some sort of sense from this essay, which found totally incomprehensible 
except for the occasional assurances that Steve doesn't like fannish fanzines. 

But it might he better for fannish f'.nzines to stop running thin sort of thing; 
at least until Steve publishes that sercon fanzine that he's bean talking about 
publishing for years and years. 

The chance to re-read The Adversaries was welcome. The story ii.dn(t leave me &3 
enthused as it did many fans, when T first read it and I was curious to see if 
a half-dozen years woud change my op nion, Iy reaction this time remains about 
the siu.e. I admire bent's narrative skill and the peculiarly famish episode 
that causes the climax of the story. But today, jusi as long ago, I didn't feel 
comfortable to find real fans and fictional fans mixed into the -.same story, 
and I feel that if Kent had lived, he would have redone the last half-dozen 
paragraphs. Something else is needed to finish off the story. The failure of 
all the important characters to be changed in any apparent way by the climactic 
event makes the reader wonder if the near-brawl was as important an event as it 
seemed when he read about it,. 

You're right in the letter column about the cause of the trouble 
with professional science fiction today, of course. I still believe that the only 
salvation for the prozines is advertising. Those thick, slick paper, lavishly ill¬ 
ustrated magazines on specialty topics like photography and high fidelity don’t 
sell, many more copies per issue than the prozines. They are T rofitable b cause 
they meet most of the production costs through the advertising, and they ’wage 
aggressive subscription campaigns to make possible circulation guarantees to 
potential advertising customers. I think there arc enough well-known character¬ 
istics of science fiction readers tc create an advertising market for a first- 
rate prezine, if someone with enough contacts and persuasiveness could find a 
publisher willing to sink a pretty good sum into launching it. 

If the artists aren't willing to criticize the work of other artists, we're going 
to be awfully short of common .3 on artwork because lots of us artists say very 
little about pictures becau e we don't know enough about art to speak intellig 
ently, and when we dc risk a comment, we usually' end up in a strenuous effort to 
spit a foot out cf our big mouth, like me in the case of that ATom drawing. Ac¬ 
tually, we've gradually scrapped the old convention that prozine auth rs shouldn't 


CiUTIcizo otner writers* fiction ant I'd be awfully happy to hear how tire good 
artists react to the work of other artists. 


Charles Brown learned an unfortunate truth about editors when he talked to ^ary 
Gnaedinger. Too many editors don't know the difference between editing.and medd¬ 
ling. I once compared paragraph-by-paragraph some of the Gnatdinger reprints 
with original book aversions and was shocked to see what petty changes had been 
made in the magazine, apparently for no reason other than the conviction that an 
editor should make changes at least every 500th word. 


I liked both covers and most of the interiors in this issue but I'll be darned 
if I'm going to embark on another learned dissertation on influences and inten¬ 
tions of the artists. 


Yrs., &c., Harry darner, Jr, 
, , ///////////////////// 

David G. Huian/r.O. Box 422/Tarzana, California, 91356 


Got Algol 11 today and thought I'd make a few comments while the iron was hot. 
Artwork, layout, etc. are as usual excellent. Spots of bad duplication here and 
there on my copy, but that’s almost inevitable with ditto - you do well to get 
as consistent repro as you do (he said, who has Problems with his own ditto...) 


I personally think Asimov's Foundation Series, or rather the whole Trantorian 
series, from The Stars . Like Dust through Second Foundation , is the standout for 
"Best All-Time Series,” though I don't know if enough people will share my en¬ 
thusiasm to get it on the final ballot. I nominated lord Of The things for Best 

before hho ruling of the Tricon Comm- 



n scrips. There is no res- 
i of the first two volumes; 
they're no more novels then a serial install¬ 
ment is a novellabte. But you can't fight 
City Hall, I guess. 


olution at the ends ■ 


Banks Febane's article on sports car fandom 
ws interesting; I've always had an interest 
in sports cars, though I've never owned one 
cr driven one. One of these days, though, 
when I get the PicroBeast paid for, I'm go¬ 
ing to get a Tit-4 or something like that. One 
of these days... 


' Mckarii-.g h.r v; that you were going to 
print Lis article and follow it up with a 
h' tenet job by To:’ kite? 44^0, I don’t think 
he -Hi: it we b a spur-of-the-moment decision 
fo- rr "-ihUc V agree pretty much with all 
that Ted saiv. about Bickering's writing. I'm 
net that publishing an article aud a re¬ 
ply ■ it in IL-i same issue doesn't smack of 
dirty pool, unless the author is aware of this 
intent and agrees with it. As it is, your pub¬ 
lication of the article is obviously a set-up 
for Ted's axa job. A-4 I'll confess that's what 

65 





I had in mind when I sked Tsoi to do a rebuttal in *he same issue; I was >> thing 
a little tired of “ickering ranting on arid on, with mi or.? bothering to stop Mr > 
I'll confess that upon seeing an article with the T-ickering by-line I v/ond •. to 
myself "Has Vorter lost his mind?" Your editorial taste is better than the 4 

was sure, A quick look ahead revealed the pur rose of it all. .'hich, to so; , 

strikes me as somewhat dubious ill this arrangement, but haybe dot. 

It might be germane to the issue, though, to point out that Pickering is only 
about 17, and that his personal contabt with fans has perforce been pretty lim¬ 
ited. 44 ->ave, right here I'm not going to print the rest of your beautiful"y 
constructed paragraph, becuase I think you should be aware of several things. 

Cn receiving the reply to fed which is printed in this issue, I called Bakers¬ 

field College and asked about the collegiate status of Pickering. lave, I think 
you might be interested to know that Pickering is JM£, and a sophomore at f kers- 
field. he is not a sociologist ; that 1 a a . lie on his part , lie is a teach er's ass¬ 
istant, which is not a teach ing assistant. Further, he called rue and told me that 
these articles were written when he was 16 ; yet the reply in this issue wan writt¬ 
en less than a month ago, and he still holds the same views. He later spoke leng 
distance with Ted, and told him all the articles were written when he was 1 and 
were then submitted to the iT3F manuscript bureau, and that I must have gotten the 
articles from there. This is a lie; I've over gotten any material from the N?F 
manuscript bureau; I'm sure that other faneditors who've received Pickering 

material have received it from the author, and not from the I&F. 1 think 
that Pickering is pretty damn immature for 19 (If you want to see a fan who's a 
mature fan at 15, look at Steve P att), and that he's a first class phony to boot.. 
And I'm sure that his professors would be very interested in him, ver? this mat¬ 
erial to cave into their hands (which I hope it won't; this is a matter for the 
people in fandom to handle). Any more questions, and I'll be delighted to n .s-.ar 
them for you „•)■)• 

To good 01' Cahrlie Brown - having just finished re-reading The B lack Galaxy. in 
which Leinster writes the .Skylark plot, I would have to say that he should be 
included with Campbell as one who describes gadgets that make you wonder why 
no one has built them. In fact, if anything he's better than Campbell, pcss My 
because he doesn't go so far out in the things he invents. Or maybe this is just 
one measure of his success - that he doesn't seem to be going too far out. I v;d 
say that Leinster would have to be considered the top all-time gadgeteer among 
stf writers, when it comes to combining plausible gadgets with halfway decent 
writing. Campbell is the only one I can think of who comes close. Smith had a lot 
of imagination, but except where it concerned explosives there was generally no 
plausible explanation for any of the super-science in his stories, keorge 0. Smith 
did some pretty good extrapolation of science in his stories, too - he was better 
at it than h!K. 


Though don't get. me wrong - I enjoy the Lenssuan series more than anything Camp¬ 
bell; Leinster, or GOSmith ever wrote. But the strength of Doc Smith wasn't in 
his gadgets, orMis characters - it was in the sweep of his universe building. 
Only two or three authors stand out who have ever equalled him there - Asimov 
in the Trautori&u Universe, but others escape my mind. The gadgets in Smith's 
stories are there basically to make the stories possible, but they aren’t the 
stories themselves, which is what they tend to be in the works of the others men¬ 
tioned. It '3 what they are in the Skylark series, for that matter: which is why 
the Skylark books are bad, and hold up very poorly today, while the lensman books 
are still good reading. And maybe that’ll stir up the natives a bit. 






Buck Coulson/'ioute 3/kart ford Citj 

Indiana, 47340 

Belatedly I notice a few check- 
r.arks in the back of my copy of Algol. 
Mo, I won't contribute. A couple of 
years ago 1 rashly promised articles 
• o Bill Banner and Geor te Scithers , ?< 
they’ve been hounding me ever since, 
the trouble with writing material for 
a good fanzine io that one must take 
little time in the siting, and 
perhaps do a bit of research. And I 
dci-’t have time for that sort of 
thingj if an article can't be written 
off the top of my head, it doesn't 
get written, 

-{•But what about all the fanzine 
reviews you do, Buck? I had 
assumed all those were written 
"off bhetop of your hend..."^ 

I'm either uhod, Bob fucker, 
or a moral crud. Ilnur.. .I’m not 

r;o I guess that gives rce a 


Tad bite's rebuttal to Bicker¬ 
ing's article isn't going to help Steve any, His major objection to fannish fans 
is that they criticize his writing; having one of the big names of "faanish" fan¬ 
dom tear it to shreds will simply ake matters worse. Partly it's because Picker¬ 
ing has not the slightest interest in writing 11 style."Ho is interested solely in 
content , he rejects criticisms of pompous style because he personally can't tell, 
and isn’t interested in telling, pomp oneness from sophistication. Fannishness 
doesn’t appeal to him because a good share of it has little or no content. Fam¬ 
ish fans, on the other hand, are less interested in content than they are in 
cleverness., Pickering is only interested in what is being 3aici; the prime inter¬ 
est of many fans is in how it's being said, (T~can sea both sides and 1 don't 
fully agree with either; ny interest la in material that is both cleverly written 
and says something, but if I suppose I had to choose I’d pick a Ted bhlte con 
report over a Leland bapiro dissertation, I might even prefer an Arnie Katz con 
report to Sapiro, though it would be a tough choice). 

And for the hest piece in Algol, it's a tough choice between Lupoff and Tuck¬ 
er. I don't think I’ll choose. — Buck 

JDODOODOOOQr 

Dick Lupoff/Kerry heLl/loughkeepoie, Mew York, t2603 

Just a brief note to congratulate you and Steve ' iekering on one of the grand¬ 
est coups of recent years in fan publishing. I refer, of course, to 'ickering's 
writing (and your obtainin’ for Algol) of his article in the latest issue. 

And my auned congratulations on the risky — but successful — ploy of sending 
the article out for a -eply in the same issue, instead of waiting for replies in 

67 




the form of letters-of-comment, 


It was certianly one of the furuifeeet pieces of straight-faced humorous 
writing that has ever appeared in a fanzine, or perhaps anywahere„ I am tempted 
to say that, it is the greatest piece of nonsense-writing since the great works 
of Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear. 


And, for that matter, my congratulations also to Ted 'bite, whose straight- 
faced "rebuttal" maintains throughout the illusion of fed's having taken Steve 
seriously. As I read through his paragraphs I kept waiting for the break in 
which Ted would acknowledge the humor of the whole nonsensical article he was 
"attacking," but he kept ! is self-control to the hilarious end. 


Once more, congratulations to you, to Ted, but mostly to Stephen Pickering. 
Long may he rave!!! Best regards —Dick 

juifw/uuuuwn. 

Cuyler arnell (Wed) Brooks, Jr./911 Briarfield Eoad/Newpo.’t news, Vf-,, 23605 

The Gaughan cover of his is the best I've over 3 een. Y.elazuy is "stewed" 
when he writes? T don't believe it! Paybe you meant it as a joke. 

44 It's fairly cam:on knowledge among pro sf circles that iioger writes at his 
best when a six-pick or other refreshments are at hand. 

I read the first page of Stevens' "f'otif Index" with preat glee, in anticip¬ 
ation of telling him about Cameron’s system; I was dissappointed to find that he 
already knew of it. The trouble with the Cameron system is that it is too complex 
to be unique. That is, no two people could possibly arrive at the same code for 
Stapledon’s hirst and Last Pen , independently. The point of a system like the 
Dewey Decimal System is that it is simple enough that most librarians assign the 
same code to the s c.e book. 


As for Coriwainer Smith, you did not read my comment on your comment very 
carefully before you commented on it! 

44lou've described the problem rather exactly, I'm afaraid 
As for writing you an article on Smith, I will give you first chance to re lect 
it! 


44herm.it me c.o mention that as I type this, it is a week since Smith (alias 
Paul Leinbarger of Johns Iiopkins University) died of a heart attack; should 
you do an article on him, it could very weil be the definitive one, if you 
put enough research into it^) 


That multicolored iLlo by Steve Stiles on page 58 was really something. You'll 
be up /dlth the old T’/IG soon. T/ilCr was before my time, but I have one that I got 
from Thil Darrell. 

44l'd like to think that I've passed the old T/IG. T./IG IliO'ED is another matter 
I think I've done it as far as contents go, tho there's a long way to go as far 
as the artwork is concerned. ^4 


I was glad to see from your fanzine re/lews that you did get Collector's 
Bulletin #4. I realize that there's net much you can say ubout such a zi.ie, but 
you mi, glit have mentioned the Bok Illo Index; there might be some readers who wd 
like to help us complete it. 

Best, —Ned 

441f you are interested in completing the Bok Index, or have any large collect- 

68 


ions that might contain any artwork by llannes Bek. contact Heel at the art ire ss 
above; 1 8 n. sure he'd appreciate any help yon give him.-)! 

j7jm/LWuwn/L 

dobin h’ood/P.G. Box 154/Amudor City, California, 

Thanks for Algol It. It arrived when I w< s unable to do anything but read, 
so it was welcome , It got here a few days after I iiad a minor prang going through 
a muddy detour between here and Sacramento. It's e real mess — five miles of 
clay, dirt, and dust where they're widening highway 49, and they haves these 
water trucks that go over it and hose it down, to keep the dust down, hile 
this works excellently as far as keeping the dust down, it makes a death trap 
out of it for somebody on a motorcycle, I had about fifty- 

feet to go, could see pavement ahead, when I hit a 
patch of greasy mud. The rear wheel fish¬ 
tailed and the bike fell over to the 
right, nothing I could do tc right it, 
so I stepped over the gas trnk and went 
rolling asshole ever teakettle through 
the mud and dirt and rocks and stuff. I 
must have landed on my shoulder because 
it stiffened up the next day and the day 
after that I could raove my am about 2 
inches without screaming, however, it’s 
now loosening up. 

The covers for Algol 11 were excell¬ 
ent, especially the front one. I have e 
feeling I've seen the back cover in Gal¬ 
axy recently. 

44-Hot a chance; they were original pieces 
of artwork, done specially for rae.-» 

I’onk and l ingua on the same gig sounds like 
a gas, tho I find it hard to believe Konk 
could play a so-303et. There’s something 
about bonk that grabs me—when I first heard 
him he sounded all wrong, now everybody 
else's piano playing sounds off key. 

Is the N3F a CIA front? Has Amazing 
Storiea been token over by THrlUSH? Ah, yes. 
Tucker exposes nearly all. But what of val¬ 
ue could a secret agent gloa out of fandom? 
And even if he did, how could he translate 
it? There are more initials (like BiSK, BNP, GAFIA, etc.) 
kicking around in fandom than in a military or government re¬ 
port... Hraram, come to think of it, there is a definite similarity. Is femlcm a 
overnment plot? Isn't this paragraph a pile of foolishness? 

BSP as a secret weapon? But, why? It’s so damn common. Tho come to think of 
it, I've heai’d there are plans for using LSD as a secret weapon; just drop it 
into the enemy'3 water supply and when everybody trips out bop on in end take 
over. Dunno how that'd work, but it nounus like a damn fun way to fight a war. 

69 











So that about wraps it up. Algol continues o be interesting, but I can't 
think of too many worthy comments, wilt Stevens' last paragraph takes the words 
rijht out of my mouth, on any comment I might make on his article. Tucker, Jhite, 
and hebane were all interesting. Those cartoons in the first half of the zine 
were pretty terrible. Especially liked the illo on page 40 — is that as hari to 
do as it looks, or is there some special trick to it? 

liobin hood 

44 You mean to say you don't like Garry Deindorfer and Steve Stiles cartoons? 
Shame on you, fella. .That illo on page 40 was done by shading in a solid 
dark area and then scratching out the illo in the -area. This isn't ha'd to 
do in spirit dapping, but it wi be hell working in miroeo. I guess.44 

jin/i/inji/wnitn. 

Amie Katz/98 Patton Boulevard /her Hyde Park, New York, 11043 

If the truth be known, your report of our phone conversation in the last 
Algol partook greatly of that surrealism for which you are infamous. I was not 
at all shockeu by your statement that most of your fanac was done directly on- 
stencil or on-roaster. After all, most of my fonac is done directly onto master 
or stencil. I did express surprise that you didn't feel your material for Algol 
was worth an extra draft. The time needed to do a first draft is slight compared 
to your over-all investment, and the results would undoubtedly be worth it. You 
have a tendency towards incoherence and lack of organization, Andy, and a rewrite 
would keep such proclivities under control. 

44 Yassuh, hr. Pickering, yassuhf! Seriously, taking in mind what you said, I 
tried to first-dr.-ft m; editorial this week. Needless to say, after 4 attempts 
I gave up. I find I need the last minute definitiveness of the master in 
front of me to make me produce that essence commonly known as Andy Porter 
in all my glory. And it might interest you to know that these comments to 
the letters are all being done first-draft directly onto the master. You 
can't teach an old frog uew schticks, as they say...44 

"The Advarsarics"was an ideal choice for an Algol reprint, in that it mentions 
rich brown several times. Seriously, I enjoyed it in the TV/hite edition, and I 
enjoyed it again in Algol. Naturally, 1 have a Gripe about the story', or rather 
your present t ion of it. I think you should have gotten some illos or something 
to justify its printing in a ditto'd format. Tie story, of course, stands well 
by itself, but, some classy ditto'd artwork would have enhanced the story, and 
made your edition different than Ted's. 

44 Unfortunately for me, does Chamberlain, who was scheduled to illustrate it 
was also to do a play at Sarah Lawrence when I was typing it up, and the 
play ;ot the preferencial treatment. There was one illo scheduled to go 
into the large oblongs on the title page, tut even that one Never Made It. 

Greg Benford 3 s idea about the reason for the scarcity of excellent genzines 
is interesting, but only part of the story. Besides the lowered egeboo quotient, 
there has been a growing tendency for neofans to accept criticism with poor grace. 
Further, many seek toaavoid further criticism by avoiding the critics rather than 
by making an effort to improve their fanzines. A pa 45 is an ape, that exists for 
nothing ether than to si ield sensitive little minds from objective criticism. 

But Greg really only talks about one side of the coin. The publisher of a 
genzine is in a real bind. He can either cater to the slobs and the uncritical 
fools, in which case he will receive dozens of semi-illiterate letters about 
Burroughs, Sword and Sorcery, and the N3F, or he can make an honest attempt to 

70 


put out a quality fanzine. There are currently in fandom perhaps 150 peop3.e 
capable of appreciating a good fanzine. Unfortunately, most of these people 
as the genzine publisher soon realizes, haven't the courtesy to even send 
an acknowledgement or a poctsruct. There just isn't much egoboo in publishing 
a top genzine these nays, Greg. Things are starting to change a little but 
for every Greg fienford who writes an interesting LoC there are $ 
several fans who never even think of responding to a good fanzine. I would 
list them for the edification of Algol readers everywhere, but so, e of them 
may be Faannish heroes, and I would hate to disillusion the people reading 
this. 

44 Actually, if anyone sent me a letter that mentioned the P3F, Burroughs, 
and s&3 in the same page, I wouldn't, even bother to list it in the We 
Also Heard From (unless it was Lin Carter or Tucker); I ! d simply throw 
it away, editorial Polic : this fanzine has no interest in the N3F 
(they never even sent me all the publications when I was a member), 

Burroughs (an amusing story-teller, but certainly not Shod, even if 
hick Lupoff sometimes mentions him; Lupoff is Harmless..,), or Sword 
and Sorcery (except if it's in a book by Dave Van Ar.iam which he ”3 
finally sold to Ace Books,..). We have certain standards, we does we 
does.. 

A good issue, Andy, I even laughed at Pickering and the suckadlwarticle he 
wrote, so it wasn't a total loss. I hope you do get out another issue before 
the Triton 44 -o do I.. There aren't too many other genzines besides 
Algol that I really look forward to, you know. 

Faanishly, —Arnie Katz 
+++++++++++ 

And so \;e end another letter column. A number of letters got squeezed out, 30 : 

•TE ALSO LF.ARD FROM: ((r eople what got squizzed out of the lettercolumn this "ish")) 
t>ill Donaho : "Algol 11 received and enjoyed." Jean Berma n; apa F discovered 
Boss Chamberlain, Artist, and, uh...Andy Porter, Editor (blush, blush). Tom 
Dupre e ill'll be in Chicago in November, and lock forward to attending many 
wonderful orgies there; Chicago fans please note.a Those youn£ fellas sure 
get around, don't they? Creath Thorne ; "Images in the lar.'ins of Gothique 
I‘ anuscripts" is one of the fascinating topics Creath covert in this letter 
which I wish he'd tu.n into an artcle for me... And lastly Alan Shaw turns in 
a wonderful LoC full of delightful faanisms that Alan has prolly cribbed from 
A Sense of FAPA; smart little rascal, that Alan Shaw. I hear tell he's Larry 
Shaw's little brother, or was it Bob Silverberg f 3 ?... 

+++++++++++ 


SUBSCRIBE T0D-GGLCR8 


Published weekly, Degler! features up- 
to-the-minute news of the fan and pro 
worlds, and is mailed first-class to all 
subscribers. 

3/25^-15/tl.OO 


British Agents Ethel Lindsay, Courage 
House, 6 Langley Ave~, Surbiton, Sur¬ 
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for six shillings. 

"The primary fan news mag" — Condon 









/ 



The reason(s) you are receiving this issue are checked off below. Pm sure there 
must be a category for you somewhere„ 

( ) You contributed to this issue. ( ) You contributed to this issue, but your 
contribution got squeezed out. 

( ) You subscribed. ( ) You sent me a letter of comment; its 

mangled remains are in the letter column. 

( ) A mangled letter of yours expired on the editing table. Thanks anyway. 

( ) We trade an a vary irregular basis. 

( ) You’re mentioned in this . issue; care to comment? 

( ) You’re not mentioned in this issue, but you’ll get the next issue if you send 
me a letter of comment. 

( ) You are Ghod, Bob Tucker, or Stephen Pickering. 

( ) You are known far and wide for your articles; please grace these pages with one. 
( ) You are a famous fannish artist; I can offer you good reproduction here. 

( ) This is the last issue you will receive, unless you send me a letter of comment. 
( ) You sent for this issue, and I have your sticky quarters in hand. 


The Deadline for n ext issue is June bet, 1967 . Material on hand includes a column 
by Robin Wood, an article by Robin White, and Poetry by Jerry' Knight..The rest de¬ 
pends, my good readers, on you., We are particularly receptive, may we add, to good , e 
solid articles on the new wave in fiction, dissections of the current fiction, and 
other items of a similar nature Next issue will be; as is this, a mixture of spirit » 
duplicating and mimecgraphy. Artists may pre-stencil their artwork, if they wish. « » 

Steve Stiles for TAFF!!! 


72 







#